


Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by November Snowflake (novembersnow)



Series: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (3T) [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amnesia, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:45:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersnow/pseuds/November%20Snowflake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the long-missing Draco Malfoy turns up at a Ministry field hospital with amnesia, bitter Auror Harry Potter must confront the shadows of their shared past to shed light on a potentially deadly mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Visiting Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 originally posted (in full) June 28, 2003.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised and Esorlehcar.

_Better by far you should forget and smile  
Than that you should remember and be sad._  
-Christina Rossetti

_It isn't supposed to be like this._

It's only a vague sense somewhere in his mind, but he figures it isn't that far off the mark, considering where he is: an old Ministry outpost, magicked and converted into a war hospital. They tell him he was wounded in battle. They tell him he was lucky not to be killed. They tell him his name is Malfoy. He has a good enough understanding of French to be able to translate the name, and its meaning doesn't seem a good omen.

He's forgotten his entire life, but still has a facile grasp of the French language. How could it be a good omen?

Sometimes he wonders cynically whether the name Malfoy truly is the one he was born with, or one the Healers christened him with during his convalescence. He hasn't been a good patient; he knows this, yet seems unable to change. He grows impatient with hospital staff who poke and prod at him like an object. He is frustrated by his inability to remember anything prior to the past month. He is weary of lying in this bed, staring at the same four walls, willing his memory to come back. He is lonely.

A tall, red-haired Healer murmured to him yesterday that it is perhaps a blessing he cannot remember the war. He knows he has been wounded, outside of the memory loss. He bears a broad scar across the left side of his chest, a vicious magical burn with an asymmetrical border of conjoined convex curves, like a child's depiction of a cloud. The wound itself was treated, but the scar remains, dark and ugly against his pale skin, covering his heart.

The young Healer with the fiery hair has small, delicate features and troubled eyes. He thinks her name is Weasel, or something equally inappropriate. When she is on duty, she watches him with a mixture of trepidation and reluctant compassion. He wants to ask whether she knows him, whether she knew him before all this began, but he doesn't. The way she always hesitates—subtly, but noticeably—before she enters his room, the slight frown that puckers her brow when she says his name…all make him think he doesn't really want to know the answer to his question.

Today she has brought someone else with her, but it's not another Healer or Mediwizard. It's a thin, wiry man in wrinkled robes marked with what he recognizes as an Auror's emblem. He doesn't understand why an Auror would be in to see him, at least not at this point. He's already seen his share of Aurors. He has been dosed with Veritaserum, interrogated again and again, but there is nothing he can tell, for good or ill. Everything has been erased. And so he is kept in this ward, despite the Mark on his arm. No one has ever explained the Mark to him, but he has seen the shudders when the hospital staff glimpse it, felt it burn occasionally with a searing pain. He knows it is not a good thing.

The Auror pulls up a chair next to the bed, one hand idly brushing a lock of unruly black hair out of his face. The stark hospital lighting reflects off the lenses of his spectacles. He seems tired, lines of care worked already into an otherwise young face, but his gaze is unwavering as he looks at the man in front of him. "Draco Malfoy," the Auror says.

"So I've been told," he responds.

The Auror settles more comfortably into his chair, slides his palms along the metal armrests. "I'd heard you were here," he says slowly, "but it's something of a shock actually to see you."

Malfoy frowns. "Am I usually so unreliable?"

An intent expression flickers in the Auror's eyes, and one corner of his mouth twitches downward in what almost seems a spasm of pain. "No," he says, "if there's one thing I'd definitely call you, it is—in your own peculiar way— _reliable_."

Malfoy's eyebrows lower in perplexity. "You know me, then. Are we friends?"

The Auror sighs, and there's an odd sadness to him. "No," he says at last, "I can't say we were ever what you'd call friends."

"What, then?" Malfoy asks. "Neighbors? Brothers?" He hesitates. "Lovers?"

The Auror starts at this, and his embarrassed glance shifts toward the young Healer, who is flipping through Malfoy's charts. "No," he replies, clearing his throat. "Schoolmates. That's all."

Malfoy closes his eyes and tilts his head back. "See? I don't remember even that much." He gestures vaguely toward the Healer. "Weasel here could be my wife or my sister, for all I know."

She gives a small cry and drops the clipboard to the floor with a loud clatter. He glimpses pain in her eyes before she turns and darts out the door. He turns back to the Auror, who also is looking after the Weasel woman. "What did I say?"

The Auror shakes his head. "She's lost two brothers in this war." His voice has grown hoarse. "Another one is upstairs in the incurable hexes ward. He's—" His throat catches and he pauses to take a breath. "There's not much hope for him," he says at last. 

"Oh." Malfoy looks down at his lap, long fingers plucking at the edge of the blanket. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, well," the Auror takes another calming breath, "it's been hard for everybody. Ron is…the closest thing I have to a brother." His knuckles are white, incongruously so against his tanned skin. "With so much death, year after year, you'd think you'd start to get used to it." He swallows. "You don't." Malfoy looks up, and the other man's eyes pin him. "You don't," he repeats.

Their eyes lock for a suspended moment, before the Auror's gaze slides away. 

"What is your name?" Malfoy asks suddenly.

The Auror looks up in surprise. "Oh. Of course. It's Potter. Harry Potter."

It seems right somehow. It has a rhythm to it. Malfoy's mouth forms the words, lips shaping themselves around them. It fits. He considers. "I think I'm pleased to meet you, then, Potter." He extends his hand.

A small line forms between Potter's eyebrows, and he looks as if he is mentally flipping back through the pages of a book, and perhaps not a pleasant one. His hand reaches to clasp Malfoy's, and their palms meet. Potter's is warm and dry, well-creased and larger than one might expect of someone of his lean build. His grip is firm, and Malfoy narrowly resists the inexplicable urge to turn the handshake into a gripping contest, to squeeze in an attempt to wound the man before him. A vain attempt, he muses, as Potter's fingers are thicker than his, marked with calluses and small burn scars. His are the hands of a man inured to hard work and danger, Malfoy realizes. The countenance is calm, the eyes shadowed, and the hands tell yet another story. Harry Potter is a man of contradictions. Malfoy's interest is piqued and it is only reluctantly that he allows Potter's hand to slide from his. The room seems somehow cooler without that contact.

They look at each other for a few seemingly interminable seconds, then Potter says abruptly, "I have to go."

"So soon?" Malfoy mentally kicks himself for letting slip that note of disappointment. Potter's eyes are intent on his. "I just…well, I don't get many visitors here. Of the unofficial sort, anyhow."

The other man's gaze shifts away, and his expression is distant. "No, I suppose you wouldn't." He looks up again to meet Malfoy's eyes. "I'll come back," he says, and seems surprised at himself for saying it.

Before he can catch himself, Malfoy responds, "Is that a promise?"

Potter stills, a curious expression flitting across his features, and his tone is almost defiant as he says, "Yeah, I guess it is."

Malfoy eyes him, curious as to why he seems tensed for a fight. "Good," he says, and notes how Potter's eyebrows lower in confusion, quickly masked. "I'll look forward to it," he adds, holding Potter's gaze for a few long moments before the other man rises and turns for the door.

After Potter leaves, and a Healer ducks in check on him, Malfoy falls asleep. He dreams of stone turrets and a burning sunset and soaring through a vast, open sky in pursuit of a red-cloaked figure on broomstick.

But when he wakes, hours later, the dream has turned to mist.

* * *

Harry Potter stops on his way out of the hospital to visit with Ginny Weasley and make sure she's all right. As he strides through the brightly-lit hallways, he can hear moans of pain, the whisper of shoes against tiles, the hum of magic at work. Every room he passes is filled with the wounded, casualties of a war that has its roots in events that occurred long before most of these patients were born, and appears to have no end in sight. There is no greater means of arguing against war, Harry thinks now, than to showcase its human toll. Countless witches and wizards have passed through this portal, en route to convalescence or a different fate. Some have been Harry's friends. And one, he muses, has been his enemy.

He catches Ginny in the corridor between patients, and she gives him a tired smile, looking worn but still lovely. Every so often he feels a pang that they couldn't make a romantic relationship work between them, and this is one of those times. He knows few people as steadfast as Ginny Weasley.

"I'm sorry about running out like that earlier," she says.

He clasps her hand. "You have nothing to apologize for. I know how hard this has been on you."

"Still," she says, looking stern, "I have to control my emotions on the job. We all do." She gestures around her. "It isn't easy watching your comrades suffer and die every day. Every one chips away at you a little." Her other hand touches his shoulder. "It's similar for you, I imagine."

"Yes," he says.

Her grip on his shoulder tightens. "We just do the best we can."

He looks into her fierce brown eyes, and is aware suddenly of how very much he loves this woman. Not as a lover, no. But she is part of the bedrock of his life, the foundation that keeps him steady. Impulsively he hugs her, and she rests her cheek against his shoulder for a moment and they just breathe together.

Too soon, she draws away. "You'll be back?" she asks.

He nods. "I'll carve out whatever time I can this week." His throat is tight. "It's so hard, to sit there and know there's nothing I can do. But…I can't _not_ be there. Even if he doesn't realize I'm there at all."

Ginny hangs her head. "I just keep praying for a miracle."

He touches her shoulder. "We all do, Gin."

"I miss him," she whispers, her voice choked with tears.

"So do I," he murmurs, his mind filled with images of Ron, from the first glimpse of his apprehensive face on the train to Hogwarts, to that fateful day—was it really only a month ago?—when everything changed. Harry refuses to contemplate that their friendship could be over in a matter of weeks, days, even hours. Ron was never meant to be the one to go first.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," Harry promises, but he knows it's a hollow thing. His presence or lack thereof hasn't made a difference. And the researchers are no closer to developing a counterspell, or even discerning what, exactly, caused his malady in the first place. So Ron lingers in suspended animation, and Harry knows he will return time and time again, to curse, and to grieve.

Ginny nods and touches a hand to his sleeve in farewell as she turns to go back to her rounds. He watches her depart, lithe and strong, her shoulders set in a line suggesting she just might be able to will her patients back to health, if that's what it takes. He has a lot of respect for Ginny's determination. She works as much against the powers of the Dark as any Auror.

Hunching his shoulders, Harry Potter slides his hands in his pockets and walks out the front door of the hospital, into the mocking sunshine.

* * *

The next evening, Harry is once again seated next to Ron's bedside. Technically, there should be no visitors this late in the day. But he has long since accepted that rules are bent for Harry Potter, and has no qualms about using that to his advantage. His hours are strange sometimes, his schedule beyond his control. What little free time he has now, he usually spends here, watching the still, freckled face of his best friend, and just talking. These one-sided conversations are painful, and sometimes he finds himself imagining Ron's responses. He so desperately misses the jokes, the flippancy, the brashness. His internal dialogues are a poor substitute.

"Three raids today," he says, elbows on his knees, fingers massaging his temples. "That's fourteen more Death Eaters in Azkaban awaiting trial. And it's still just a drop in the bucket."

In his mind, Ron replies, _But that's still fourteen wizards who won't be_ Avada _-ing innocent people anymore, right?_

"Well, yes, I suppose you're right. But that's assuming they're convicted."

_You have evidence against them?_

"Yes, of course, we have evidence." He runs his hands through his hair, making it stand on end even more than usual. "But that doesn't always mean anything. You know how chancy the trials have become. Evidence tampering. Witnesses threatened. And—God!—the juror pool is practically nonexistent at this point…."

_Let the courts take care of themselves for now. You have enough on your plate as it is._

"You're right. I know you're right." He lays a hand on Ron's still one, pressing gently. "I know you didn't want me to become an Auror in the first place."

_None of your friends did, Harry._

"Of course, none of you did. The only people who were excited by my decision were the Aurors themselves and the Death Eaters who are out to kill me."

_You always did have something of a danger fetish._

Harry cracks a wry smile. "Danger fetish? More like a death wish sometimes, I think."

_Why is that, Harry? Why do you put yourself in the line of fire like that? I've never fully understood._

He bows his head. "How can anyone else understand what I don't entirely understand myself?"

_The Boy Savior._

He laughs without mirth. "Boy Savior? You know better than to quote tripe like that at me, Ron."

_If it's what the public want to believe…_

"For the time being," he snorts, then closes his eyes briefly. "It's never been what I am."

_Why join the Aurors, then, when there are other ways of fighting You-Know-Who?_

"Like in Intelligence, you mean?"

_Well, for one thing._

He frowns, a tense line forming between his brows. "And then I'd be off in some Unplottable, Untraceable location, just like Hermione, and not even know you'd been injured."

_Ouch. Low blow there, mate._

"Sorry," he says wearily. "I am sorry. It's just…no, I couldn't be in Intelligence."

_Why not?_

"It's…too detached. Too mental. I need to be doing something hands-on."

_So you can look Darkness in the eye?_

He shrugs, unwilling to examine his motives too closely. "Something like that, I suppose."

_Is it vengeance that drives you?_

He sighs. "Vengeance. An interesting term, that."

_Interesting to those who pursue it, at least._

" _Am_ I out for vengeance, do you think?" he muses. "Whatever happened to the noble goal of vanquishing evil and making the world safe again for wizards and Muggles everywhere?"

_Oh, of course you want that too. But you're Harry Potter._

"I'm Harry Potter," he echoes dully, "and when you're the Boy Who Lived, no battle with the forces of evil is ever impersonal."

Ron's voice subsides in Harry's head, and he sits in near-silence, listening to his friend breathe, watching the shadows grow long in the waning daylight.

"Your window faces east," Harry says, apropos of nothing.

_You've mentioned that before. Doesn't do me much good if I can't see it, now, does it?_

"If you were awake, you could watch the sunrise."

Harry can almost hear Ron make a rude noise in response.

"I know, I know," he chuckles. "Early morning is not your favorite time of day."

_That's an understatement. I never understood how you learned to tolerate those early mornings back in school._

Harry's eyes shift toward the window again. "I like sunrises. I find them…comforting."

_How?_

His voice is low. "It's a promise. Every sunrise is a promise of a new day, and a confirmation that tomorrow has come, and will come again."

_My friend, the philosopher._

Harry smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Sometimes I've felt sunrises were the only things I could take comfort in."

_What about sunsets?_

Harry's expression shutters. "Sunset is a betrayal."

* * *

Once again, he stops by Draco Malfoy's room on his way out of the hospital, and suppresses a small shudder of relief to find the other man asleep, long stripes of gold spreading across his bed from the western-facing window. The light glints off the flaxen strands of his hair, forming a curious halo around his still face. The room is otherwise dim, and Harry stands in the shadows, watching those aquiline features in repose. No smirk, no sneer, no frown of bewilderment, even. It seems strange to him to see Malfoy so at peace. Of course, he reflects unwillingly, it isn't the first time he's seen him so. 

He leans back against the wall, and a wave of sensation washes over him. He refuses to admit it might be pain.

"Damn you," he grinds out through clenched teeth. "Damn you." His hands are balled into helpless fists. His knees buckle slightly and he feels himself sliding down the wall until he is crouched with his knees to his chest, fists kneading at his forehead. He can feel the ridge of his scar against his knuckles, smell the sun-warmed, antiseptic air.

"Damn you," he whispers. "How can you not remember?"


	2. Absence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 originally posted August 26, 2003.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my beta, Bow, and to Maerda Erised for feedback and encouragement.

_But he saw only dying light and a dead land.  
He uttered no prayer, believed in no deity,  
and knew that the past was devoid of meaning,  
like the present, and a refuge for cowards._  
\--E. M. Forster, _Maurice_

Ginny Weasley still daydreams about Harry Potter sometimes, but it's more out of habit than anything else. He has been a constant in her life since she was ten years old—a crush, then a friend, then a boyfriend, and finally a brother. The star-struck infatuation of her youth is long since faded, and even the romantic relationship they tried on for size at Hogwarts is just a distant memory—affection, little passion, and an amicable parting. The few kisses they shared seem almost to belong to someone else's recollections now. Sometimes she didn't even feel truly involved in them when they occurred, as if she were just an object, an impersonal recipient—and the detachment was on both sides. She is surprisingly unbitter about this. But still there is a certain sweetness attached to the memories—before the darkest years of war, before the deaths began to pile up, before Harry learned to close off his emotions, before Ginny realized love was never guaranteed.

So, on certain days, she remembers. It might be a particular shade of red that calls to mind the fluttering scarlet robes of Gryffindor Quidditch. A fresh, leafy scent in the air that reminds her of how he kissed her for the first time, so sweetly, under a tree behind the Burrow the summer before her sixth year at Hogwarts. The sound of a snakelike hiss that makes her think of Parseltongue and a cold, cavernous chamber and the way Harry fulfilled every girlish hero-dream she ever had of him, and more.

She is long past the age of girlish hero-dreams now.

She reflects sometimes on how Harry is the reason she developed an interest in studying medical magic in the first place—surely a boy as danger-prone as Harry would need a lot of medical attention over the course of a lifetime. First it was simply a personal goal, a way to keep Harry safe and alive. But then she loved it for its own sake—the healing, the mending, the concrete knowledge, the science and the art—and it came easily to her, an unexpected gift, like her talent for potions. She tried to envision a future with Harry—perhaps taking an apprenticeship with Madam Pomfrey, should Harry choose to teach at Hogwarts; maybe a Team Mediwitch, should Harry choose to play Quidditch professionally; possibly her own practice someday, when she and Harry settled down.

The war changed her dreams, of course. But Harry changed them first.

It's been a week since Harry's last visit to the hospital, she thinks now as she examines Draco Malfoy's burn wound. He hasn't stayed away this long since Ron was first injured—only something dire would keep him from here, and, though she realizes it would only irritate Harry if he knew, she worries.

"What happened to your friend?" Malfoy asks suddenly.

Startled, her gaze jerks upward to meet his. "My friend?"

"That Auror. Potter."

"Oh. I…I don't know." She beetles her brows. "Why do you want to know?"

Malfoy shrugs, and even shirtless as he is, it's an elegant gesture, white skin shifting along a spare frame. "He said he'd come back. He hasn't. I wondered whether something happened."

"Like whether he's been killed?" she asks, unreasonably angry.

His gaze is piercing. "It _is_ a war out there. Unless I'm much mistaken."

They stare at each other for several seconds, then she frowns and flicks her gaze back to his chest. "I don't know where he is," she says, applying salve rather ungently. "I'm not his keeper."

"I thought maybe you were." She looks up sharply and he quirks an eyebrow. "His sweetheart anyway."

"No, I'm not. Not that it's any of your business."

He grins suddenly, a flash of white against white. "Touchy, are we?"

She jerks her head to toss an errant lock of hair out of her eyes and fixes him with a stony glare. "Don't even start," she says quietly, and his grin subsides at her tone. "Don't you even _start_ to talk about things you know nothing about."

His gaze flickers downward for a moment before returning to hers. "The problem is, there's a lot I know nothing about at this point."

She can feel her face falling into tired lines again—the weary expression that makes her mirror tut-tut and say, "Dearie, you need sleep. Or maybe a holiday." But there've been no holidays for a dozen years now, not for anyone. And she knows it's selfish to even think about the idea, even if she acknowledges somewhere deep, deep inside that 25 is too young for such worry lines. She sighs tiredly and turns her attention back to the salve.

They conduct the remainder of the procedure in silence.

* * *

Harry turns up at the hospital the next evening, and she knows better than to ask for an explanation. He walks past her in the hallway and brushes his hand against hers by way of greeting, but doesn't say a word. She bites her lip as he disappears around the corner, en route to Ron's room. Some of the Healers in the Incurable Hexes ward have murmured that they hear Harry holding one-sided conversations with Ron, sometimes for hours at a time. Somehow it doesn't surprise her that, even comatose, Ron can lay claim to more of Harry's conversation than she can.

She is pulled from her reverie when a low, unusually reserved voice just behind her says, "Wotcher, Ginny."

She turns to find Tonks standing there, face streaked with dust and dirt underneath spiky black hair, strained smile firmly in place, a hollow look to her eyes. "Tonks," she says, then narrows her eyes. "You're bleeding."

"Am I?" she asks, surprised. Her hand immediately rises to her face, leaving even darker smudges as she fumbles for the injury.

"Here," Ginny sighs. "Let me take care of it." She pulls Tonks into an empty examination room and steers her to a chair before she can knock over anything important. The other Healers still talk about the time she upset a canister of Sad-B-Gone and the entire Emotional Distress Ward had to be evacuated. Tonks had been seized by uncontrollable fits of laughter for days afterward. Ginny dampens a cloth and wipes the dirt from Tonks's face. Tonks closes her eyes, and as Ginny strokes the cloth across her skin, she thinks of how young the Auror appears. She's over thirty now, and has her share of scars, both old and new, but she still retains a look of youth and innocence. Ginny wonders sometimes whether it has anything to do with her ability to change appearance, whether it's a conscious affectation. Then Tonks opens her eyes and smiles at her, a guileless grin, and Ginny's almost embarrassed to have thought there might be something false about her. How ironic that her gift is to appear other than she is.

"You have such gentle hands," Tonks sighs. "Like my mum when I used to play by the riverbank and came home plastered in mud every afternoon."

The comment draws an almost reluctant smile from Ginny. "You wouldn't think me gentle if you'd been on the receiving end of the pummelings I gave my brothers when we were growing up."

Tonks laughs, a startling note of merriment in the subdued ward. "Ginny Weasley's fists of fury. I tremble in fear."

"You should," Ginny retorts as she applies a healing salve to the cut on Tonks's temple. Tonks hisses at the sting, then sighs as the cut immediately begins to bind itself back together. "I may not attack with my fists anymore," Ginny murmurs, stroking a thumb along the newly mended skin to test it, "but I have other weapons at my disposal."

Tonks's fingers curl around Ginny's wrist and her eyes catch Ginny's, searching. "Somehow," she says after a moment, "I don't doubt that."

Ginny blushes and drops her hand, Tonks's smooth fingertips brushing against her wrist as Ginny slides it out of her loose grasp. She turns away to dispose of the cloth. "So you came in with Harry?" she asks.

"Yeah," she says, and there's no emotion in her voice now. "The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has been tracking a high-ranking Death Eater for months, and finally thought we had our chance to nab him, but—everything went wrong." Ginny turns and sees that Tonks's eyes are closed, an expression of pain tightening her features. "He had a half-dozen other Death Eaters squirreled away, plus a hostage. No one knew. Or no one bothered to tell us." She slams a fist against the table. "I swear, the Intelligence network is falling apart."

"Careful there," Ginny says, a note of frost in her tone. "One of my best friends works in Intelligence."

"Oh, you know I don't mean Hermione! I mean the lines of communication. Something's fallen apart somewhere. We should have been warned. Someone should have known. Instead, eight people are dead, including an innocent wizard who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Ginny steps closer and puts a hand on Tonks's shoulder, which she touches gratefully. "I'm sorry," Ginny says.

Tonks forces a laugh. "Oh, it isn't your fault, any more than it's Harry's fault he keeps landing in these botched operations." She shakes her head. "But it'll be a long time before I feel like going back to Ireland." She pats Ginny's hand and stands up. "I'd better go. I've already taken you away from your job for too long."

Ginny shrugs. "I'm a Healer. This is my job."

Tonks's smile is wry. "Merlin knows I've required more than my fair share of your services."

"Well," Ginny says, shrugging again, but not without a small, slightly wistful smile, "it's always good for the injury-prone to have friends who are Healers."

Tonks laughs. "Remind yourself of that when you find I've attached myself to you permanently."

"I wouldn't mind," Ginny says, distracted, then blushes slightly when Tonks's smile broadens in response.

"Good," Tonks says, and laughs again. "Good." She winks at Ginny and covers her nose with her hand, scrunching her face in concentration. There is a small _pop_ , and when she removes her hand, her nose is an exact replica of Ginny's small, upturned one, down to the last freckle. Ginny laughs, only a little embarrassed that the old game has never grown tiresome.

"I love hearing you laugh," Tonks grins, and that statement is enough to make Ginny stop, realizing where she is, and why, and how inappropriate it is to laugh now. Tonks wiggles her nose, trying to provoke another giggle, but Ginny just shakes her head. Tonks sighs as she catches Ginny's hand and rubs her thumb along its delicate bones. "I have to go," she says. Her brow creases slightly. "I'm not sure whether Harry's going to be all right. Do you think maybe you could talk to him?"

Ginny tries to tug her hand back, but Tonks holds it fast. "It's pointless," she says. "Harry never talks to anyone about what bothers him." Her mind drifts to the upstairs ward. "At least not to anyone who could respond."

Tonks squeezes Ginny's hand one last time before letting go, and then she's gone. Ginny fights to ignore the tingling in her hand as she puts away the supplies and heads back to her rounds. 

* * *

"Seamus is dead," Harry says without preamble.

There's no response, of course, just the quiet hum and shuffle of the hospital ward. Harry stands by Ron's bedside, looking down at that slumbering face, his own countenance nearly as expressionless.

Ron doesn't respond tonight even in Harry's imagination.

"We tracked Aidan O'Leary to a manor house outside of Dublin. We'd been told it was empty, that no one had observed activity there for months. I shouldn't have trusted the information. After the last time, I should have known better."

He sinks into the low, hard chair and buries his face in his hands for a moment, but his voice, when he continues, is dispassionate, echoing the way he related the tale to his superiors just that morning. He can't bring himself to give the details again. "It was another botched raid," he says. "Tonks and I were told only O'Leary was there, but there turned out to be a whole cabal of Death Eaters in hiding—and they'd taken Seamus hostage. It was—" His voice breaks almost imperceptibly, and he pauses. "He pushed me aside," he says, voice tight and controlled. "He took a curse directed at me, and was dead before I could even reach him." His fist clenches against his thigh, and his eyes close. "How many more friends do I have to watch die, Ron?"

He opens them again and stares at nothing. "But you know what the worst part is?" he says slowly. "I hadn't seen Seamus in two years, and it's—I know he's gone. I know that. On the one hand, it's hard to understand that he isn't just at home in Ireland with Lavender and their daughters, owling back and forth with Dean, going about his normal, everyday business. But—I just can't miss him. I can't make myself miss him. Because he was already gone from my life."

Harry frowns at his feet, conscious of the quiet in the room—the hushed sounds of this wing of the hospital, the spatter of raindrops against the windowpane. Ron doesn't answer. Ron never really answers. Abruptly Harry rises to his feet and stands again at Ron's bedside, glaring down at his friend's still figure. "I know you're there somewhere, Ron," he says in a low voice. "You're not going to go away like everyone else." He closes his eyes. "You can't."

* * *

On his way back from Ron's room, Harry heads for the doors, then hesitates. He hasn't forgotten Malfoy. He wishes he could. He knows he promised Malfoy he'd return, but, he thinks, he never promised when. It doesn't need to be now. Malfoy won't care. Hell, Malfoy probably hasn't even thought about him.

But somehow he finds himself standing in Malfoy's doorway, watching him frown over this morning's _Daily Prophet_. Harry shifts his weight, and his shoe squeaks against the tile. Malfoy looks up, startled, before a wicked smile creeps across his face. "My favorite absent Auror," he murmurs, eyes hooded.

Harry frowns. "I can't very well be absent if I'm here."

Malfoy only laughs and gestures with the paper. "I was just thinking about you."

"Why—oh." Malfoy holds up the front page of the newspaper, and Harry sees his own face scowling out at him, gaze shadowed but unflinching. "BOY WHO LIVED LEADS DUBLIN ASSAULT," the headline reads. Harry grimaces.

Malfoy seems amused. "So you're this 'Boy Who Lived'?" Harry's frown is all the response he requires. He laughs again. "It's so good to see that everyone has such a brilliant grasp of the obvious. It's not as if you can stand here and be the Boy Who Died."

Harry blinks.

"So," Malfoy continues, tossing the paper aside, "what exactly did you live through to earn a name like that? Other than the obvious twenty-some-odd years, of course."

"A curse," Harry says flatly. "When I was a year old."

Malfoy stares at him for a few moments. Then, "Are you serious?"

Harry scowls. "Of course I'm bloody serious."

"You've been called the Boy Who Lived almost all your life—"

"Yes."

"—and all because of something than happened when you were too young to remember it?"

" _Yes_ ," Harry snaps.

"What, you haven't done anything noteworthy since?"

Harry feels himself clenching his fists and doesn't even really know why. After all, the same questions have occurred to him many times over. "I do a lot that's noteworthy," he growls. "For one, I managed to restrain myself from killing you when we were in school together."

Malfoy snickers. "The Boy Who Lived With Repressed Anger."

"Do you really think you're being original?"

Malfoy quirks an insolent eyebrow. "Well, I wouldn't know one way or the other, would I?"

"Oh," says Harry, his annoyance subsiding only slightly. "Right."

Malfoy watches him for a few moments with a bland expression, then abruptly laughs. "You know, it's amazing what I can get away with just by pleading amnesia."

"And I imagine you take advantage of that at every opportunity," Harry mutters.

"Of course."

"You always were an insufferable git."

"Oh really?" Malfoy sits up straighter, looking intrigued in spite of the insult. "What else was I?"

Harry blinks at him. "What do you mean?"

"Really, Potter, how dense are you? I don't remember anything beyond the past month or so. You claim that we have a history together. What do you _think_ I mean?"

Harry frowns. "You want me to tell you what you were like back in school?"

"Yes."

"Besides being an insufferable git, you mean?"

"Yes," Malfoy almost growls at him, and Harry can't resist the strange urge to laugh anymore. It's a sharp, rusty sound, unused, but it feels good. Malfoy watches him skeptically.

"All right," Harry says, in a better humor suddenly. He seats himself in the narrow, ugly chair against the opposite wall and rubs his palms over his knees, knobby even through his robes. "What do you want to know?"

Malfoy bites his lip, looking uncertain for the first time. He hesitates. "Anything," he says at last. "Tell me anything you remember. How did we meet? Did we get along? What did you think of me?" He pauses. "What did _I_ think of _you_?"

"I…we met in the robes shop before we went away to school."

"Where did we go to school?"

"Hogwarts," Harry says, and a ghost of a smile appears. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Oh," says Malfoy. "Right. I've heard of it. That's the place those Death Eater creatures tried to lay siege to recently, isn't it?"

The smile disappears, and Harry sighs. "Right."

Malfoy watches him for a few moments, but when no more information comes, he asks, "So what did we study at Hogwarts?"

"A lot of things," Harry says, but he's clearly distracted. "Transfiguration, History of Magic, Charms, Herbology." He pauses, then continues, looking more intent. "We had Care of Magical Creatures and Potions lessons together."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Harry says, rubbing absently at a small scar on his finger. "We were partners in Potions sometimes."

Malfoy frowns. "I thought you said we weren't friends."

"We weren't. Professor Snape assigned partners."

"Based on similar ability level?" Malfoy asks, considering him with more interest.

At this Harry laughs again. "Hardly. Though I suspect you enjoyed how my incompetence made you look even better by contrast."

"Then why put us together?"

It's on the tip of Harry's tongue to tell him the truth, to say, _Because we hated each other, and Snape got his jollies out of humiliating me. Because we were enemies, Malfoy, and it was completely pointless to think—_ But something holds him back. "Dunno," he says, and shrugs. "Snape was…hard to understand sometimes."

Malfoy seems to accept this without question. "So," he muses, "I was good at Potions?"

It still galls Harry a little to give him credit. "Yes."

" _Very_ good?"

Harry scowls. "Yes," he says. "Very good."

"Brilliant?"

"You're pushing it, Malfoy."

Malfoy laughs. "Oh, that's all right," he says. "I can tell by your expression that I was, and it just pains you to admit it. No need to say anything."

Harry is torn between making a smart retort, thus giving Malfoy the satisfaction of having provoked him, or remaining silent, thus lending credence to Malfoy's words. In the end he just glares and makes an impotent growling noise.

But Malfoy isn't even paying attention, his brow furrowed in thought. "All right, so I was good at Potions. What else was I good at?"

"Being a complete wanker," Harry mutters.

"What was that?" Malfoy asks, looking up.

"Nothing," Harry says.

Malfoy raises an eyebrow, but doesn't press the issue. "What did I like to do?" he asks. "What have I done since I left school?"

Harry sighs. "I don't know what you've been doing all these years," he answers, almost honestly. "We…lost touch after Hogwarts."

"Oh. I must not have done anything remarkable then." Malfoy looks disappointed. "If I'd been doing great things, you probably would have heard about it."

Harry remembers easily a dozen Auror councils speculating on the whereabouts of the Malfoy heir, about how he seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, how even the captured Death Eaters interrogated under Veritaserum did not know the location of Lucius Malfoy's only child. Harry doesn't know whether Malfoy has done anything either great or terrible, or both. He shrugs.

Malfoy scowls at his seeming indifference. "Where do I live? Do I have any family? A—a wife? Children?" His expression is angry, but there is a shadow of pleading in his eyes as he asks, "Why has no one else come to visit me?"

Harry finds he can't look at him. "Your parents are…dead. You don't have any siblings. As far as I know, you're not married."

"Don't I have friends? Doesn't anyone know I'm here?"

Grim, Harry meets his gaze again. "If any of your friends are still alive," he says, enunciating each word, "they don't know you're here."

"Well, why not?" Malfoy demands. "Why hasn't anyone contacted them?"

"They aren't allowed here."

"Why not?" he asks again, smacking his palm against the mattress. "It's not as if only family are allowed to visit." He sneers. "Unless they make exceptions for Aurors."

"No," Harry says, glaring. "They make exceptions for _me_."

Malfoy stares at him, as if surprised by his flash of ego, and Harry is surprised himself. "So," Malfoy says, quieter now, "why don't you ask them to make an exception for my friends?"

"I can't do that."

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Both."

"Why _not_?"

Harry snaps, "Because they're on the wrong side of the bloody war, Malfoy!"

Malfoy frowns, then takes a deep breath. "You're lying," he says quietly.

Harry's voice is weary. "I'm not."

"So you're expecting me to believe that all my friends are these—" he gestures toward the _Prophet_ , its pages scattered across the floor "—Death Eater creatures?"

"Yes."

"I suppose I'm one of them too, then, right?" he snorts.

Harry waits until Malfoy meets his eyes, then repeats, quietly, "Yes."

Malfoy looks back at him, his eyes hard. "What am I then," he asks slowly, "some kind of prisoner?"

Harry sighs, hating that he's the one to get these questions, wondering what's taken Malfoy so bloody long to ask them. "Yes," he says again.

Malfoy growls low in his throat and launches himself out of the bed. "Fuck this," he snarls. "I'm getting out of here." He hurtles himself across the room to the door, only to smack into an invisible barrier and end up sprawled on the floor.

"You can't leave," Harry says, still not rising from his chair on the opposite side of the room. He knows he sounds tired. "The room is charmed to keep you in."

Malfoy twists around and glares at him. "But I _have_ left the room, Potter. Plenty of times."

"In the company of hospital staff," Harry says. "Only for tests and the like. If you'd tried to leave them, the spell would have snapped you into a full body bind."

"How do you know that?" Malfoy sneers.

Harry shrugs. "I was one of the people who helped develop the spell. This is a milder form of what they use at Azkaban now that the Dementors are gone."

Malfoy laughs, bitterly. "And I haven't even had a fair trial. At least one that I remember."

"It's just a cautionary measure," Harry says. "A restraint."

"Oh, that makes me feel so much better," Malfoy spits. "Like a dog on a leash."

"If that's how you want to look at it."

Malfoy eases to his feet. "And just how am I _supposed_ to look at it, Potter?"

"It's for your protection."

"Right," he says.

"Under the spell, you can't escape, and you can't harm anyone else. But no one can do you harm either."

"Why would someone even want to harm me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Harry retorts, at the end of his patience. "Maybe because you're a _Death Eater_?"

Malfoy ignores this. "So when do I get released from this spell?" he demands.

Harry shrugs. "I'm not sure. Maybe after you get your memory back, and you get out of hospital."

Malfoy stands in front of him, clad only in striped pajamas that are a little too big for him, looking more like a petulant, overgrown child than a man who may have killed countless others. His lip curls. "And when is that going to happen, Potter?"

Harry rubs his hands across his face, pressing the heels to his temples. "I don't know," he says. "I don't know anything."

Malfoy turns away, and the gray light diffusing through the window traces the weary lines on his face, giving lie to the childlike image. "Yeah, well," he says, "that makes two of us."


	3. Seekers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 originally posted October 16, 2003.
> 
> Grateful thanks to Maerda Erised for the beta and to Shatterglass for a helpful bit of magic.

_He had lost one world and not gained another._  
\--John Steinbeck, _The Pearl_

Malfoy _wants_ to remember.

He wants to remember his distant past the way he can remember two days ago, the way he remembers spells and incantations and the feel of magic tingling along his nerves and ready at his fingertips, coiled like a serpent ready to strike. He hadn't needed anyone to tell him he was a wizard. The magic is in his bones, knit into the fiber of his skin. It's as much a sensory awareness as it is a memory.

He has about two months of this obscure new life on which to draw now, and as far as he can tell, the Healers are no closer to removing the memory block. They've exhausted every Memory Recovery charm in their texts, one of them confessed when he prodded. Although he was brought to the hospital in less than ideal physical condition, with some bruising and minor head trauma in addition to the peculiar burn on his chest, they're certain it's not the result of a physical blow. But they have no idea what sort of magic might have caused his amnesia. According to what they've been told, he possessed his memory one moment, and it was gone the next. "How do you know that?" he'd asked. "Was someone else there? Did somebody tell you that?" But they wouldn't answer.

No one will tell him how he came to be here, what the circumstances were that presaged his memory loss. Some of the Healers refuse to talk to him at all outside of direct questions about his health, memory, and personal well-being. These ones seem almost annoyed when he tells them he's fine, no, the burn doesn't hurt today, no, he still can't remember anything past the day he woke up here. Once a week they trot out the Veritaserum when the Aurors come to question him, to be on the safe side. He hates the muzzy feeling it gives him, the lack of control over his own mind. It doesn't matter anyway—his answers remain the same. It's worse when the Aurors interrogate him about things unrelated to his health. There's always an unholy gleam in the administering Auror's eye when Malfoy is dosed with the serum, a certain dark smile when he feels himself slipping under its influence, a kind of mental tunnel vision suppressing his will until he is aware only of the questions he is asked and the truths he gives in return. _Where have you been for the last five years? What was Lucius Malfoy planning? What is Voldemort planning?_ "I don't know," he says again and again. "I don't know. I don't know."

The Aurors vary from week to week, and the same one never appears twice, perhaps under the assumption that different questioning styles eventually will crack whatever barrier it is they imagine he's erected. Today it's a grizzled old man missing a part of his nose and with one eye that rotates independently and seems to see right into Malfoy. In spite of his resolve to appear unruffled, the effect is eerie. The Healer doses Malfoy with Veritaserum and he feels it rolling across his mind like fog. His face and limbs fall slack. The Auror only watches calmly while the Healer asks the usual perfunctory questions. _Are you in any pain? Do you remember how you were injured? What is your earliest memory?_ Finally he departs and Malfoy waits for the usual Auror interrogation. But the Auror's first question is a new one—were his responses not so dulled, he might almost jump.

"What is your relationship with Harry Potter?" the old man barks.

"I—" The question spears into his mind like a beam of sunlight breaking through the cloud cover. But it illuminates nothing. "I don't know," he says.

The Auror eyes him speculatively. "How many times have you met with Potter since you arrived here?"

The answer comes easily. "Twice."

"And what did the two of you do during those visits?"

"We talked."

"What about?"

"About how we were at school together. What I was good at. He said I was a Death Eater."

The Auror grunts. "What was your reaction to that?"

"I didn't believe him."

"Why not?"

The question is frustrating, even through the haze of Veritaserum. "Because…I don't feel evil." Were his reactions not so suppressed, he'd feel embarrassed to be so inarticulate.

But the Auror only watches him, strange eye unblinking. "How do you think evil would feel?"

"Vengeful. Angry. Cruel."

"You don't feel angry?"

"Not like that."

"How, then?"

"I'm angry that I don't know who I am, that no one except Potter will tell me anything. I'm angry that people like you have the right to ask me questions I can't answer."

The Auror is silent for a few moments. "How does Harry Potter act when he is here?"

"He seems tired. Or angry. He laughed once. Mostly he just sits and answers my questions."

"What do you ask him?"

"I ask questions about my past, about what he can remember."

"What has he told you?"

"He's told me about our lessons together at Hogwarts, and that I appear to have no friends or relations. All in all, he says very little."

"What do you think about him?"

"I think he needs a holiday. Or a good shag."

The Auror only raises an eyebrow at that. "What do you think of him as a person?"

"I find him oddly likable. Trustworthy. Sad. I respect him."

"Are you friends?"

"No."

"Do you think you could be friends?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because Potter doesn't like me."

The Auror seems to pay closer attention. "Why do you say that?"

"He yells at me. I yell at him. He doesn't like to talk about the past, and that's what I usually ask him about. He says we weren't friends in school."

"What were you back in school?"

"I don't know. Acquaintances, Potter said."

"But not friends?"

"No."

"Not enemies?"

"He didn't say so."

The Auror mutters something to himself and makes a note in a small notepad, his strange blue eye never leaving Malfoy's face. "Has Potter told you why he visits you?"

"No."

"Why do you think he does?"

"Probably to gloat. Just like all the Aurors."

"What makes you think the Aurors are gloating?"

"The way they smile. They always smile when the Healers give me Veritaserum, because they can see I hate it." He pauses. "But you didn't smile."

"No, I didn't." Malfoy registers hazily that he can't imagine this man ever smiling. "Does Potter ever give you reason to think he's laughing at you?"

"Not in the same way."

"How, then?"

"If he's laughing at me, it's because of something I've said, or some memory I made him think of. It isn't malicious."

"But you said he visits you to gloat."

"Well, maybe he doesn't."

"Why does he visit, then?"

"He and that red-headed Healer seem pretty tight."

"Why does he visit _you_?"

"I don't know. Maybe she told him to. She was here the first time he visited."

"Why would she tell him to visit you?"

"She's probably scared of me and wanted the company."

The Auror makes another note. "What do you think of her?"

"I don't like her."

"Why not?"

"Because she and Potter are entirely too close."

"Why would that make you dislike her?"

"I'm jealous." Even in the depths of his own mind, Malfoy can feel the mortification.

"You don't like her because she's Potter's friend?"

"Yes."

"Have you met any of Potter's other friends?"

"No."

"Would you dislike any of his friends, just because they're his friends?"

"Probably."

"Is it just because they're Potter's friends?"

"Yes."

"Not anybody else's friends?"

"No."

"Why are you jealous of Potter's friends?"

"Because I want his attention."

"And they take him away from you?"

"Yes."

"You want all of his attention?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever feel violent toward his friends?"

"No. Not really."

"Not really?"

"No specific impulses. Just vague, unfocused anger."

"Do you ever feel violent toward Harry Potter?"

"No. Yes."

"Which is it?"

"Yes."

"How so?"

"Sometimes I want to hit him for being so stubborn."

"Do you ever wish to do him serious harm?"

"No."

"Do you want to kill him?"

"No."

"Could you see yourself wanting to kill him?"

"No. No, I could never see myself wanting to kill him."

"Have you ever killed?"

"I don't know."

The Auror's gaze sharpens. "Could you kill?"

"I…maybe." His breathing has sped up. "Maybe."

"Could you kill Harry Potter?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I couldn't. He's important to me somehow. He's kind to me. I'm…attached to him."

"Why are you attached to him?"

"I don't know. There's something there, beyond what I know consciously. Something draws me to him. I wait for him to come every day, and I'm hurt when he doesn't. There's something about him I…need." He almost says _crave_ , and isn't certain which is more truthful. His fists clench and unclench in leashed frustration at his impotence. "I can't explain it."

"Do you think it has something to do with your past?"

"I think it might."

"Do you remember Harry Potter from your past?"

"No." He closes his eyes. "I wish I did."

"If I say _Cor Celatum_ , does it mean anything to you?"

"It's Latin. It means _the hidden heart_."

"Have you heard it before?"

"Yes, from the other Aurors who asked about it."

"Have you ever heard anyone other than an Auror say it?"

"No."

"Have you ever read it?"

"No."

"Do you know of a spell that uses those words?"

"No."

"What do you think might be the effect of such a spell?"

"It sounds like a love spell."

The Auror almost smiles. "How very interesting."

* * *

It rains for almost four days after Harry visits Malfoy. He has gone to the hospital every day, but only to sit with Ron. He steers clear of the Obscure Maladies ward altogether. Yesterday as he arrived, he encountered Mad-Eye Moody, who was just departing. Mad-Eye growled something in greeting before stomping toward the Apparation area outside the hospital bounds. Harry was certain his magical eye continued to watch him until Harry rounded a corner inside the building. It's still a bit mind-boggling that he is working under Moody. But after many of the senior Aurors were killed in raids over the past year, Moody was one of the few people qualified—or perhaps foolhardy—enough to take over the Chief Auror position. No one suspected how much he'd been itching to get out of retirement until Arthur Weasley, the newly christened head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, asked him to do so. Moody's paranoia no longer seems so unreasonable after ten years of constant war. In fact, it's almost a comfort now to know someone with, so to say, an eye in the back of his head is looking out for the Aurors, and the wizarding world in general.

There's no change in Ron's condition, of course; there never is. Recently, though, Harry noticed that Ron has become thinner. The Healers are making sure he gets the nourishment he needs, but without movement, without releasing the energy that has always seemed to thrum in Ron's veins—in most of the Weasleys, truth be told—his bulk has begun to dissipate, the shoulders and chest not as powerful as they once were. Not for the first time, Harry wishes for Hermione, as always convinced that she could put her finger on the problem, have some obscure learning gleaned from books that would pinpoint the source, illuminate the failure of every Healer and researcher on the case. He wants to believe that Hermione is the key. But then he wonders how Hermione would react when she learns that Ron has been hospitalized for two months without her knowledge, how focused she could be once she sees Ron, disappearing bit by bit in a cold, impersonal hospital bed. He remembers how she used to tease Ron about his strength once he finally grew into it, poking at his wide shoulders, pinching his biceps. Ron would make faces and flex while Harry laughed at their banter. He always suspected, though, that Hermione's touches would be much more reverent were she and Ron alone, and certain things understood between them. But Ron was blind and Hermione stubborn, and now they are half a world apart, separated by so much more than physical distance.

Yesterday one of the Healers told Harry they would be running more tests on Ron most of today, so he shouldn't count on being able to see his friend. So Harry sits at home in his flat, watching the rain streaming through the streets outside and fingering the letter that arrived from Remus this morning bearing the seal of the Secret Wizarding Operations for Research and Development. The owl that brought it is perched in Hedwig's cage, occasionally ruffling its still-damp feathers. Clever Remus put a waterproofing charm on the parchment, however, so it is wrinkled only through the worrying of Harry's fingers.

 _Dear Harry,_ it reads.

Reading between the lines of your last letter, I'm guessing that you've been neither sleeping nor eating properly, and spending far more time than is healthy at the hospital with Ron. Arthur tells me that nearly every time he or Molly are there during visiting hours, you're there, or have just been there, or are expected to be there. I've said so before, but it bears repeating: You are not at fault, Harry. I've read the documents, and heard the story from Moody himself. There's nothing you could have done short of attacking Ron yourself, and there was no time for that. If he'd stayed back, perhaps he would be fine now, but there's no way of knowing. It isn't your fault Ron was hurt, even if he was acting in your defence. It's nobody's fault. There were easily a dozen factors that influenced how the circumstances played out—if the Aurors had been forewarned of the number of Death Eaters, if they hadn't been taken by surprise, if Ron had thought before he acted, if he hadn't held on to his schoolboy grudge against Draco Malfoy. If, if, if.

I promise you, Harry, we will determine what that curse was, and why it caused Ron and Malfoy to be hurt. It's a priority for our research teams because we don't know how many other Death Eaters may be aware of the same spell. Right now, though, I don't have anything to tell you that you don't already know. There is no trace of it in any literature of the last 1,000 years. It's entirely possible that it is some form of very ancient magic that has been lost to time. But the other researchers and I are confident we will find something. After all, if Malfoy knew it, there is evidence of it somewhere, even if the Ministry has to track down every single remaining Death Eater and put them under Veritaserum. Meanwhile, the Healers are doing everything in their power to keep Ron healthy and try to stimulate his responses. I know you're worried, Harry. Hell, I know you're terrified. I know that loss is never easy, no matter how many times you experience it. God, how I know that! But you haven't lost him yet, and if we have our way, you won't—at least not as a result of this.

It's been a while since I've seen you, Harry, and I do wish you'd visit more often. I've thought about dropping in on you, but I respect your privacy too much for that. Besides, you're never home! If you're worried about violating _my_ privacy, you needn't be. My home is always open to you, Harry. Always.

Please do come by sometime, when your schedule permits. I'm afraid I may have to start haunting the hospital myself if I want to catch a glimpse of you.

Remus




It isn't that he doesn't miss Remus. It isn't that he doesn't care for him. But every time Harry visits, they seem to end up talking about Sirius. While that isn't as raw a wound as it was a decade ago, he's never shaken his feelings of guilt. And as much as Remus tries to reassure him about everything, somehow Harry always feels even more hollow and depressed when he leaves, seeing again what the years have wrought on his former professor—the deep lines of pain carved into his face, the gray that far, far outnumbers the brown in his shaggy hair, the smile that never quite reaches his eyes anymore. He knows Remus misses Sirius—and it was only several years after Sirius passed through the Veil that Harry understood the true nature of their relationship, blind adolescent that he'd been—but he can't bring himself to relive the memories over and over. Even though, in his own way, he understands Remus's compulsion all too well.

He drops the letter on the table next to him and takes off his glasses to rub his temples. He knows, intellectually, that deciphering the spell that hit Ron is a Ministry priority, for fear that it could be a potent, unknown weapon. And he knows that even if it weren't a Ministry decree, Remus would still consider it a personal priority for Ron's sake, for Harry's. But it's hard to understand that they have been researching the spell for two months and determined nothing. Arthur Weasley had already told him there was no trace of it in any of the Ministry's reference materials—books, old manuscripts, documents, letters—centuries worth of accumulated wizarding knowledge. It's incomprehensible. How could Malfoy know something of this magnitude, and have it unknown to the rest of the wizarding world? Where did he find it? The contents of the libraries in Malfoy Manor were confiscated after the raid, and they contained a treasure trove of ancient Dark Magic texts. But there was nothing about this. Nothing.

Annoyed to catch himself brooding again, he abruptly stands and reaches for the cloak hanging on a peg on the wall. If he's going to sit around staring at walls, he might as well do so in his office at the Ministry, where he might actually feel compelled to get some work done.

He glances at the letter lying on the table. And, well, as long as he's Apparating to London, he might as well stop by Remus's flat. He thinks vaguely that tonight may be the full moon. If so, Remus might be at home, making preparations. He'll stop in to talk. Just for a few minutes. For old times' sake.

Certainly it's easier to do most things for the sake of old times than new.

* * *

Even over twenty-four hours after the Auror's visit, Malfoy still has a residual headache from the Veritaserum. He knows this is a result of the suppression of will and the tension that creates, but can't remember how he learned that. He wishes he'd never had to learn it in so practical a fashion, nor in such a regular one.

The horror of Veritaserum's aftereffects, though, lies not in the persistent headache, but in that he can remember each and every word of the exchange. Previous Auror visits have never left him feeling so raw and exposed, but those were, for the most part, perfunctory questions regarding his claim of amnesia. This was the first such visit to delve into his personal thoughts, his emotions, and Malfoy is horrified at the revelation of feelings he hadn't even realized he harbored. He feels sick, beyond even the headache—roiling nausea that twists his gut and makes him sweat, his skin pale and clammy. This isn't a physiological side effect. He's never been affected so before, and even the young Mediwitch dispatched to his room after the Auror's departure to record his vital signs remarked on the fact. "Heart rate accelerating," she murmured. "Blood pressure high." She looked up at him from her chart. "Shouldn't the Veritaserum be wearing off by now?"

"It is," he'd growled.

"Prove it," she said, eyes narrowed.

He spread his arms. "I love being trapped here in this hospital and interrogated by sadistic Aurors!"

"Hmph," she grunted, and turned back to her notes, muttering, "Veritaserum…worn…off," as her quill scratched.

And the measurements have only continued to climb as he's further regained control over his will. The Healer on duty is concerned, and offered him a tranquilizer, but he refused. He doesn't want his reactions suppressed any more than they already have been today.

He folds himself up as he sits on the bed, pressing his forehead to his knees. He can hear the slap of raindrops against the narrow window, feel the thrum of magic enchanted into the very walls of this building—protective charms, shielding charms, containment charms. He'd wondered, before Potter's visit, why he couldn't perform magic, when he could still feel it under his skin, writhing like snakes. He'd thought it an aftereffect of the injury that landed him here. Now he knows. He hasn't forgotten the power…they've just stripped him of his ability to use it. They might as well have carved out his lungs, his liver, his heart, or any other vital organ. 

He breathes, and feels the warm air collect in the space framed by his legs, his torso, his head. It bathes his face, and he closes his eyes against the wash of air. He trembles.

The position doesn't help his nausea, but it does limit sensation. His body huddled, his eyes closed, his arms braced over his head, shielding his ears, he feels only the chill air of the hospital room, the pulse of magic; he tastes the bile in the back of his throat.

_Why do they want to know if I would kill Potter?_

_What do they think me capable of?_

_What have I already done?_

Potter hasn't seemed to feel particularly threatened during his visits, he thinks, but that may have something to do with the combination of amnesia and imprisonment spell. Why would Potter smile, even laugh in that rusty way of his, if he were somehow in danger? Why would he come at all?

And what would Malfoy do if he stopped coming?

He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut, feeling his face burn with humiliation even through the layer of cold sweat provoked by his nausea. So openly declaring his desire for friendship, his odd feeling of connection with Potter. Thank God the Auror didn't pry further. Thank God he didn't ask if Malfoy finds Potter attractive. There is just enough Veritaserum left in his system that he knows the answer is _yes_ in spite of every impulse within him longing to shout a denial.

He wants to deny the absurd jealousy he feels just looking at that red-haired Healer, the ridiculous disappointment he feels now whenever another day passes without a visit from Potter, the weird little leap of joy he felt four days ago when he looked up to find Potter standing in the doorway. He wants to deny that part of the reason he feels the urge toward physical violence against Potter is that he simply wants to touch him, to confirm he's real, to feel the solid thud of his fist against Potter's flesh, to draw blood and feel his drawn in return.

He wants to deny the dreams that have begun to come more frequently, of a cold lake and a brilliant sunrise, of comfort and Potter and the urge to do more than touch.

His stomach clenches, and he runs to the loo to be sick.

When the Healer comes by again bearing a potion to calm his stomach and make him sleep, he doesn't even try to refuse. And when the dream comes again, he has no awareness of truth, and no concept of denial.


	4. Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 originally posted November 13, 2003.
> 
> Thank you to my betas, Bow and Maerda Erised.

_The nearest dream recedes, unrealized._  
—Emily Dickinson

 

The dreams come to Malfoy with disturbing frequency.

The emotions change, and sometimes the resolution, but there is almost always a lake, a sun-burnt sky, and Potter.

Sometimes there is snow, sometimes rain. Sometimes it's fair. Sometimes it's warm. Sometimes the only heat is in Potter's gaze.

There are dreams where Malfoy is the one to walk away, dreams where it is Potter. There are dreams where they look at each other with almost a sort of kindness, and other dreams where Potter grabs him and yanks him forward to…what?

He wakes up unbearably aroused, and curses himself.

"Such language," says a voice in the dimness, and Malfoy freezes.

It is not quite dawn, and the room is still mostly dark, just a bare hint of pale light creeping in around the edges of the curtains. It is just enough to glint off the glasses of the person seated in the chair by the window. "Potter," Malfoy says, his voice hoarse with sleep.

"Good morning," Potter says, his tone no indication that it really is.

"What the bloody fuck are you doing here?" he grunts, dragging himself into a seated position and tugging the covers into his lap.

"Must have been a good dream," Potter says blandly.

Malfoy is mortified to feel his face flushing, and is grateful for the darkness. Irritated, he snaps, "Dreaming about torturing Muggles always gives me a hard on."

Potter's response comes like a lash. "Don't even joke about that." Malfoy can hear Potter's breath whistling in and out. After a few moments, it begins to even out. Potter turns his face away, and the early morning light limns his profile in hazy blue. "You were saying my name," he murmurs, and Malfoy stops breathing.

Potter turns to look at him, and once again his face is veiled in shadows. Malfoy stares back at the blankness of him, unsure how much Potter can see of his expression. He coughs and looks away. "Morning wood," he offers.

Potter makes a vague sound that might be assent. "Were you dreaming?" he asks.

Malfoy hesitates. "I don't remember."

"Do you dream often?"

He growls low in his throat. "Unless you're here on an official Auror visit, I don't have to answer your questions, Potter."

"That can be arranged. Would you prefer to do this on the record?"

Malfoy glares at him, clenching his fists in frustration. Potter holds his gaze.

Digging his nails into the blanket, Malfoy finally bites out, "Yes."

"Yes, you prefer to do this on the record?"

"Yes, I dream!" Malfoy spits.

"Ah." Potter shifts, reclining further in the small, stiff chair. "What are these dreams about?"

"Water," he says. "The sun." He pauses. "You."

"Me?"

"Yes."

"What am I doing in your dreams?"

Malfoy snorts. "Sitting, mostly."

"Where?"

"By some sort of lake, I think."

Potter has gone perfectly still. "Just sitting?"

"For the most part, yeah."

"Are you there too?"

"Yes."

"And what are you doing?"

"Sitting."

"Huh," Potter says. "Very exciting dreams, then."

"I never claimed otherwise."

Potter tugs at the sleeve of his robes. "What are you thinking in these dreams? Or feeling?"

"Sad," Malfoy admits.

"Why sad?" The room has begun to brighten, and he can see that Potter is watching him closely.

He shrugs. "I'm not sure. There's just a sense of…inevitability. Loss." He grapples for the right word. "Futility."

"How old are we in these dreams?" Potter's voice sounds odd. Strained.

He ponders briefly. "Teenagers, I think. Maybe around eighteen?"

Potter turns his face away. "And we're just sitting?" he says.

Malfoy hesitates. "Mostly, yeah."

Potter half-turns back to him. "Mostly?"

"Yeah."

"Are we doing other things, Malfoy?"

"That's not important."

"Who are you to decide what's important!" Potter shouts.

They stare at each other in the misty half-light of dawn.

Potter turns away, and it is clear that his voice is lowered only through Herculean effort. "I need to know," he says, "whether you're really remembering or just…imagining."

Malfoy's eyes narrow. "So that lake really exists? All that really happened?"

"Maybe. What do you remember about the dreams?"

"There's…a sense of being alone, even when you're there."

"Do we talk?"

"Rarely."

"Do you remember anything about what we've said in the dreams?"

Malfoy tries to focus, but shakes his head. "It's all hazy. I just remember you grinning and me being annoyed with you over something."

"Ah." Potter is silent for a few moments, his brows knit. "So, do we do anything at all other than sit around and almost never talk?"

Malfoy hesitates. "I…well, there's this one…."

Potter watches him, green eyes sharp behind his glasses.

Malfoy takes a breath. "We're standing on the shore of the lake, and I'm upset about something. You're angry with me, I think." He pauses. "The sun is setting."

Potter nods slightly in encouragement, his eyes never leaving Malfoy's face.

He looks down, his gaze unfocused as he tries to remember the details. "I…you step up close to me and grab me by the tie and pull me forward so we're almost nose to nose. You're saying something I can't understand. I can feel your breath on me." He stops. 

A pause. "What happens next?"

Malfoy looks up at him and shrugs. "I wake up."

He gazes at Malfoy, pensive, then looks away. When he speaks again, his voice is light, as if the answer doesn't really matter. "How did you feel, in that dream?"

Malfoy's hand clenches, but he doesn't look away from Potter's profile. "I wanted you."

Potter's face closes, and he stands. "That's it then," he says brusquely. "It's all pure imagination."

Malfoy doesn't realize how high his hopes have risen until he hears Potter's abrupt dismissal. "But why?" he insists. "How can you be so sure?"

Potter's gaze spears him, his expression darker than Malfoy has ever seen it, even in his strange, recurrent dreams. His voice is low, angry. "Because you never really wanted me, Malfoy." He slams the door behind him as he leaves.

* * *

When Ginny reports to the hospital at 7 a.m., she hears from one of the Mediwitches going off duty that Harry already has been there and gone today. "How did he look?" she asks, absently pulling on her Healer's robes.

"Distracted," the Mediwitch responds.

Ginny almost laughs. "More so than usual?"

"Yes," she says, and Ginny's expression sharpens.

"How long was he here?"

"Well, I know he spent an hour in your brother's room, just silent. At least, I never heard anyone talking. Then he left my ward, but I understand he didn't leave the building until about four hours later."

"Four hours! Where was he?"

"I don't know. We had a lot of commotion upstairs this morning; it's a wonder I noticed Potter come and go at all. Lia in Emotional Distress said she saw him walk out of the building about an hour ago. I have no idea where he spent the rest of that time." She leans a hip against the doorframe and eyes Ginny. "Doesn't he spend a lot of time in your ward?"

Ginny ignores the question.

"You're always so secretive, and there are dozens of shielding charms on that corner of the building," the other woman murmurs. "Must be someone either important or dangerous there." She raises an eyebrow. "Or both."

"I have no choice but to be silent," Ginny says, her gaze direct.

The Mediwitch looks at her for a moment, then nods. 

Ginny proceeds to the Obscure Maladies ward and pauses to talk with another Healer. "Harry?" she says.

The Healer sighs. "Four hours in Malfoy's room."

"Did you hear anything?"

"I didn't hear voices at all until around dawn."

"So…what, was he watching Malfoy sleep?"

"Near as I can tell."

She shakes her head. "What did they talk about?"

"I don't know."

"Weren't the recording charms working?"

"Potter seems to have turned them off."

"What? Why?"

He shrugs. "Don't know."

"But he couldn't have been here on official Auror business. Not that early." She rubs her temple, then shakes her head again. "I'm sure it wasn't important. Thank you." She touches his arm and walks away.

It is only through sheer willpower that she doesn't head to Malfoy's room first, but by the time she does get there, she's agitated. "Sleep well last night?" she asks as he slides off his pajama top to prepare for her examination.

"As well as can be expected in a hovel like this."

"Huh," she says, using her wand to shine a light into each of his eyes, yet somehow not really looking at him. "I take it you were disturbed?"

He is silent until she reluctantly draws back to make actual eye contact with him. His expression is bitter. "I'm sure you know exactly what disrupted my sleep last night."

"Were you dreaming again?" she asks, almost innocently.

"Yes," he growls, "but that isn't the point. The point is, your little lapdog was here again—"

"Don't call him that," she snaps.

"What do you care? I thought you said you weren't involved with him."

"I'm not. But he's my friend, and you have no right to call him anything. No right!"

He leans forward. "That's an awfully vehement reaction for a pretty tame epithet. Are you sure there isn't something you're not telling me?"

She is breathing hard, and just glares.

As she watches, his face loses some of its sharpness, and his expression is tired, careworn, making him look older than she's ever seen him, like a century of wear imprinted over a child's features. "Why?" he asks, his long-fingered hands curling into fists in the pajama top on his lap. "Why does he come here at all?" He looks at her, almost pleading. "Did you tell him to come?"

"No," she says, surprised enough at the question to add, "I tried to persuade him _not_ to come."

A short bark of laughter. "Yes, that makes a lot more sense." He shrugs, a tired gesture. "Did he tell you why he wanted to come here?"

"No." That much is the truth.

"Do you have any idea why?"

That hits closer to the mark. "I might," she admits, grudgingly, "but it's not something I'm at liberty to tell you."

"Why not?"

"Harry Potter's business is his own."

"Not if it concerns me!"

She gives him a sharp look. "Yes, even if it concerns you, Malfoy."

His fingers dig into his thigh. "Why," he says, biting off each word, "will no one in this place tell me a goddamned thing?"

She sighs. "Because even if we were allowed to tell you, most people here don't know anything of the sort you want to know. They only know you as a name, a photograph in the _Prophet_ —they don't know you personally."

His gaze bores into hers. "You do, though."

She doesn't try to deny it. "Not as well as others," she says.

"Like Potter."

She inclines her head.

"But why would he bother with me if we weren't friends?"

"Did he say you weren't?"

"Yes."

She shrugs and turns away. "I don't know," she lies. "Hero complex, maybe?"

"Guilt, maybe?"

She spins to face him. "Harry Potter has nothing to feel guilty about where you're concerned."

"Are you absolutely sure about that?"

"Yes, I am."

They stare at each other for several seconds, a contest of wills, before he is the one to shrug and look away. "Why, then, if not some sort of strange atonement?"

"Maybe he's just a masochist," she mutters, but he overhears her and laughs.

"Surely," he murmurs, "a masochist would crave something sharper than the reception he gets from me."

She stares, eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

He looks up at her, and his—sad? could it be sad?—expression drops and is replaced by his customary sneer. He spreads his arms and jerks his head. "Well, let's get on with it, then. Surely you've other patients to torture."

She proceeds with the examination, but her expression is considering.

* * *

"Sometimes I just miss watching him sleep," Remus had said as he and Harry settled into the spindly wooden chairs in Remus's kitchen yesterday, Harry with a Butterbeer, Remus a goblet of Wolfsbane. He has an agreement now with the Ministry's Head Potions Researcher, who can brew the potion almost as well as Snape did once. But Snape brewed his last Wolfsbane almost eight years ago now, after Harry's final year at Hogwarts. Voldemort does not take betrayal lightly, and Snape's death had served as an example to all his followers. Only the bravest or most foolhardy Death Eaters, seeing what had remained of the Potions Master, would have thought to cross the Dark Lord after that.

The goblet sat smugly on the table, smoking, and Harry shook off the memories as Remus downed the potion with a wince and a shudder. He took a deep breath and looked at Harry again. "Isn't it odd how you miss the trivial things, the things you took for granted?"

"Like Ron swatting at Pigwidgeon," Harry said, thinking of the small owl whose cage resides in Harry's flat now. Pig doesn't twitter as much as he once did.

Remus laughed. "I wonder if Sirius knew what a love-hate relationship he was beginning when he offered that owl to Ron." His grin faded and he sighed. "Foresight was never one of his strong points."

Harry wrapped his fingers around the Butterbeer bottle and didn't say anything.

Remus's eyes were distant. "After Azkaban, every moment was precious. Every moment. I hated to sleep for fear that I would wake up and realize it had all been a dream, and he was still in that terrible place, still guilty. Some nights I would lie awake just to watch him sleep, and see his face lose a little of that tension, watch some of the lines smooth out. But he never entirely relaxed, even when he was asleep. I knew he dreamed of Azkaban. He would thrash about until he sensed me near, and he would say my name like it was the only thing in the world that brought him comfort."

Harry felt the sick hollow of old pain again. "Did he ever dream of anything but Azkaban?"

A surprised grin twitched unexpectedly at the corner of Remus's mouth before he caught and suppressed it. "Sometimes," he said with a gleam in his eye. Harry hadn't pressed the question further.

Now Harry sits in his office at the Ministry and stares at the face of Draco Malfoy. It's been almost three months since the successful (officially, it is a success—no Aurors or other DMLE agents killed, and all suspected Death Eaters either captured or killed) raid on Malfoy Manor, and the surprise discovery of the missing Malfoy heir, long thought dead, but Harry hasn't yet taken down the photograph. Malfoy's schoolboy face sneers and preens, laughs as Harry watches with shadowed eyes, the work on his desk untouched.

He feels a presence behind him, and sighs as Tonks pulls up a chair and sits to his right, resting her head on his shoulder. Her hair is carroty orange today, so similar to Ron's he almost asks her to change it. But that would be petty. She looks at the photo of Malfoy—her cousin, of course, though it's a family tie recognized by neither side—and her voice is matter-of-fact. "You must hate him."

He checks to make sure the door to his office is closed. Not even all the other Aurors have access to the classified information on Malfoy. As far as most of the wizarding world is aware, Malfoy is still missing, if not dead. "What makes you say that?" he asks, tone neutral.

"He almost killed your best friend. He tried to kill you."

"We don't know that for sure."

She snorts. "You don't believe that any more than I do." She clasps his hand in hers, her palm trying to press comfort into his, as though it were as tangible, as transferable, as warmth. "Does it bother you that he's alive and awake when Ron, well, isn't?"

Tonks, Harry thinks wryly, never lacks for bluntness. "Every bloody day," he admits. "It'd be so much _easier_ if he could remember everything he's done. Then I could just hate him free and clear."

"But it's complicated."

"Right." The photograph is scowling at him and Tonks now, and Harry scowls back. "Everything's fucking complicated."

"Hmm," she says, and turns his hand over, running her fingernails—short and round and silver—along the lines of his palm, tracing head and heart and life. "Ginny worries about you, you know." She lifts her head and waits until he turns to make eye contact. "So do I."

He smiles at her, laughs, but she frowns, unconvinced. "I'm fine," he says. "Really. Fine."

In response she only tilts his hand and traces cool fingers along the scars of a decade ago. _I must not tell lies_. She looks up at him and quirks one orange eyebrow.

He holds her gaze until she sighs and stands up, dragging the chair back to its usual place as she leaves. When he hears her speaking brightly to one of the Aurors down the hall, he looks back at the photo.

Malfoy winks.

* * *

It's almost dawn when Ginny returns to her flat, and her feet and head are sore. She leans her forehead against the door and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. She can still smell the hospital on her skin. She can always smell it, a hollow undertone of potions and hopelessness.

After her shift yesterday, she met her parents in the Incurable Hexes ward to spend an hour at Ron's bedside while her mother and father talked to him about Bill's new girlfriend, Charlie's troublesome Hungarian Horntail, Fred and Angelina's little boy, Arthur's work at the Ministry, Molly's new recipe for pumpkin tarts. No one mentioned that Percy's name still hasn't been cleared by the Ministry, even a year after his death, or that search teams have recovered another of George's fingers. Almost half his body has been found in the three months since the explosion in Diagon Alley. There are many of whom no trace has been found so far. The Weasleys are lucky to have closure, they've been told.

Ginny looked at the still figure on the narrow hospital bed and mentally hexed anyone who'd ever spoken to her of _closure_.

When prompted by her mother and father, Ginny tried to think of something positive to tell Ron, but her voice was flat. "None of my patients died today," she said. "That's a good day."

Molly and Arthur looked at her with pleading eyes, but she couldn't force cheerfulness. She clasped Ron's hand in both of hers and tried to ignore how cool and lifeless it felt.

Afterward she went to a Muggle pub and drank steadily until closing. But she isn't drunk now. Sometimes she thinks she can never drink enough. 

Sighing, she tugs out her wand and unspells the lock to her flat. She walks through the darkened room and tosses her coat toward the sofa without a glance. When she hears a muffled grunt of surprise, she jumps and lifts her wand. " _Lumos_ ," she says, and her mouth falls open to see Tonks blinking at her in the sudden light, Ginny's coat half covering her head. "What are you doing here?" she gasps.

Extricating herself, Tonks replies, "I came to find you after work, and decided to wait." She glances at the clock, which indicates it is "Too early to be awake." "Guess I fell asleep."

"But I have anti-Apparation charms on the flat."

Tonks grins. "And I have a Swiss Army knife and Auror training." Ginny blinks at her, then sits down, hard, in an armchair on the other side of the room. Tonks's grin disappears. "Hey, are you all right?"

Ginny shakes her head, just slightly.

Tonks crosses the room to kneel at Ginny's feet, looking up at her so earnestly that Ginny wants to cry. Silly, she thinks. She hasn't cried in ages. Crying is a waste of energy. In the light of the wand Ginny still grips, Tonks's hair is clearly orange today, almost the same shade as her own. Ginny laughs a little and reaches to trail her fingers through it, feeling the subtle abrasiveness of the spikes against her skin. "This isn't a good color for you," she says.

"I like this color," Tonks says, but she closes her eyes and with a _pop_ her hair is its own natural black again. Ginny's fingers stay where they are. "What can I do to help you?" Tonks asks, voice softer than Ginny has heard it in a long time. "What do you need me to do? To be?"

Her fingers tighten in Tonks's hair, and Tonks leans closer. Ginny sees herself reflected in the blue depths of her eyes, looking pale and drawn and older than she should. Tonks's face is close to hers, skin white and flawless, brows high and sharp. Ginny looks into the true face of the Metamorphmagus, and her breath hitches. There is no disingenuity there, nothing false, nothing concealed. She closes her eyes, and her mind whirls with thoughts of Ron, and her family, and Harry, and everything that goes unsaid. "You," she says at last, "you're exactly what I need." And when she begins to cry, Tonks is there to hold her.


	5. Opening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 originally posted February 16, 2004.
> 
> Many thanks to my betas, Bow and Maerda Erised.

_your slightest look easily will unclose me  
though i have closed myself as fingers_  
—e e cummings

When Ginny wakes, the sun is streaming through the window, and the head on the pillow next to hers is fuchsia.

Even as she watches, it melds into purple, then blue, almost in time with Tonks's soft snores. Ginny finds herself smiling and angles her body to lean slightly over the sleeping woman. Her finger reaches out to touch Tonks's nose, and a hand clamps over her wrist. She jumps, and sees that one of Tonks's eyes has opened. "Mmph," Tonks grunts, hoarse with sleep, "didn't anybody ever tell you not to tickle a sleeping Auror?"

Tonks releases her wrist and, relaxing, Ginny eases back, chin propped on her hand. "I thought the motto was 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon.'"

"Have you ever awakened an Auror from a sound sleep?" Tonks deadpans. "We breathe fire first and ask questions later."

"I don't see any fire," Ginny retorts, unrepentant, then wrinkles her nose. "I do, however, detect some powerful morning breath."

At that Tonks laughs and rolls over on top of her. Ginny has only a moment to feel her breath catch, her heart begin to beat crazily, before Tonks's mouth is…hovering above hers. They both freeze, and Tonks's eyes are inches from Ginny's, flickering with surprise, anxiety, desire, the pattern more fascinating to Ginny than any physical transformation Tonks can perform. So absorbed is she, she almost doesn't realize when Tonks speaks. "If you don't want this," she says, voice low, tense, "I'll stop right now."

Ginny takes a breath, and she can feel the warmth of Tonks's body pressed against hers, from breasts to hips to thighs. She arches her back slightly and feels Tonks try to suppress a groan. Smiling, she reaches upward and slides her fingers into that short, spiky hair, now a brilliant turquoise. Her gaze on Tonks's is challenging. "Don't you dare," she murmurs, and pulls Tonks's head down to hers.

The sensation is exquisite, and Ginny has to remind herself that this is Tonks, her friend, the quirky Auror she's known, at least in passing, since childhood. Tonks, who shows up unexpectedly just when Ginny needs her and doesn't even realize it. Who'd let Ginny cry on her shoulder for an hour that morning, even to the point of falling asleep in Ginny's bed, her shoulder still tear-damp, while Ginny clung to her in sleep. Tonks, who's never touched her before the way she is now, and Ginny could almost weep again from the joy of it.

When Tonks draws away, propping herself up on her elbows, her face is flushed and her hair more brilliant than before, if that's possible. Ginny trails a hand along her flank, and Tonks twitches, collapsing on top of her with a muttered, "Sorry...sorry...ticklish."

Ginny laughs, wrapping an arm around her when she would otherwise draw away, and speaks into her hair. "Maybe the saying should be amended to 'Never tickle an Auror, full stop.'"

Tonks's cheek is pressed against hers, their bodies flush, both still breathing noticeably faster. "Might be wise," she manages. "You always were a smart one." She kisses Ginny's ear, then rolls away before Ginny can catch her. When Ginny turns to her side, she is sitting upright, looking down at her with an inscrutable expression. "I didn't mean for anything like this to happen," she says.

Ginny sits up and latches onto Tonks's hand, holding fast when Tonks tries to tug it away. "Don't tell me you have regrets now."

Tonks squirms a little. "It's not that I have regrets exactly. It's just—" She pauses, frowns. "I don't want to ruin—" She shakes her head. "I mean, I'm not sure you're ready—" Finally, she laughs. "Hell, I'm not sure _I'm_ ready for this."

Ginny strokes her thumb along the back of Tonks's hand, tracing the narrow bones, the slight rise of veins beneath the skin. Her skin is smooth but not flawless, marked by nearly invisible networks of small scars—faint silver lines where the skin has been rent and healed, shiny patches that form a terrain of burns. She hates to think of Tonks being hurt, always has hated it, even as she treated some of the injuries that caused these marks. Her fingers remember smoothing salve over raw skin, sealing gashes, setting and mending broken bones. In some ways, she muses, she's played a part in the creation of this body. Her care eased the pain, and where scars could not be prevented, minimized their appearance.

She glances up to find that Tonks is watching the movements of her fingers, mesmerized. Daringly, Ginny trails her fingertips higher, along the delicate bones of her wrist, her eyes on Tonks's face as the other woman begins to breathe a little faster. Amazing, Ginny thinks, how effective a simple touch is, the contact of nerve endings on nerve endings, and how fragile the balance is. She has seen patients exposed to obscure potions that hypersensitize the skin, bringing searing pain with the merest touch, while others have been subjected to curses that deadened all nerve endings, so that the sensation of touch was lost completely. Sometimes, in both cases, the patients go mad before a cure can be effected. Too much touch can be agony, while too little...torture.

Her fingertips skate just barely over the sensitive skin of Tonks's inner wrist, and she smiles at the sudden indrawn breath. When she lifts her fingers, breaking the light contact, Tonks's eyes rise to meet hers, and Ginny finds her own breathing has begun to hitch, seeing the near-glazed expression, the dilated pupils. She leans forward so that her face is inches from Tonks's. "Not ready?" she murmurs.

Tonks blinks, and the dazed expression in her eyes clears slightly, leaving her looking a little sheepish. "Well…I earned high marks in Deception. Obviously I'm very good at lying to myself."

"But not to me," Ginny says, and smiles.

"Never," Tonks says, and closes the distance between them.

* * *

The next time Potter shows up, it is broad daylight and his face is blank, no indication in his expression that anything other than bland pleasantries has ever passed between them. He carries a book under his arm and hands it to Malfoy without even a greeting.

"What's this?" Malfoy asks.

"A photo album. From Hogwarts." Potter's mouth twitches downward, and it's the first hint that he may not be entirely comfortable. "I don't have many pictures with you in them, but something might jog your memory."

Malfoy traces his fingers along the red leather binding, embossed in gold. _Hogwarts 1998_ , the cover reads. He brushes his thumb over the letters thoughtfully, and wishes the word felt familiar to him.

Potter hovers at his elbow, and Malfoy glances up at him. "You can pull up the chair, you know. I won't destroy your precious book while your back is turned."

"Oh," says Potter, looking startled. "Right. Of course." Stiffly he rounds the bed and drags the chair closer. He looks more uncomfortable sitting next to Malfoy than he did standing, and seems to be taking care not to sit too close.

Sighing, Malfoy opens the book to a photo of a young witch and two equally young wizards, one of whom is clearly Potter. A tall, red-haired wizard who reminds him of Potter's Healer friend stands in the middle, one arm around each of the others, both of whom are waving. All three are smiling, but there are shadows under their eyes, and the gray castle that rises behind them is familiar to Malfoy from newspaper photographs. "That's Hogwarts?" he says.

Potter nods, his eyes on the figures in the foreground.

Malfoy's finger hovers over the image of Potter. "That's you," he says, no question in his tone. He waits until Potter nods again. "Who are the other two?"

"My best friends."

When he doesn't say anything further, Malfoy asks, "Where are they now?"

Malfoy wonders if he imagines the ire that has crept into Potter's tone. "I don't know," he says, voice curt. "Either of them, really." He scowls and looks away. "I don't know where either of them has gone."

Malfoy looks at him, but Potter won't meet his gaze. He turns the page, and there is Potter in a strangely familiar red and gold uniform, looking fidgety and self-conscious in front of the camera. He grips a sleek racing broom in one hand, his fingers—in what is almost surely an unconscious gesture—trailing lovingly along the handle. "What's this for?" Malfoy asks.

Startled, Potter looks up at him. "Quidditch," he says. "It's before my final Quidditch match."

"Oh," he says. He's read about Quidditch, and something about it seems familiar. He can almost sense the power of the broom harnessed under his grip, feel the force of the wind in his hair. Suddenly Malfoy recognizes the uniform. "I dreamt about this," he says, surprised, and Potter looks at him sharply. "Well," he amends, "not about this photo, but about you flying in this uniform."

"You dreamt about me flying?"

"I think I was chasing you."

At this Potter laughs, and some of the tension leaves him. "When it came to Quidditch, you were always chasing me, Malfoy."

There's an insult in there somewhere, but damned if he can figure out exactly where it lies.

"What position did you play?" Malfoy asks.

"Seeker," he says, and there's an unmistakable note of pride. He eyes Malfoy almost with amusement. "You were a Seeker too."

Malfoy remembers what he's read about Quidditch, and now he gets the slight. He scowls, feeling distinctly petulant, and flips another page of the photo album.

The next photo depicts Potter's tall, redheaded friend in the same scarlet Quidditch uniform, the color clashing horribly with his hair. He is beaming at the camera, one hand waving, the other curled around a rather less impressive broom. But he holds it as affectionately, if not more so, than Potter holds his. Except for the smile—he's never seen her really smile—the resemblance to the Healer is uncanny.

He glances at Potter. "Is he related to that Healer?"

Potter looks at him, distracted. "That Heal—oh. Right. Ginny. Yeah, that's her brother."

"Ah." Some things begin to click into place, and he thinks he might feel less envious of the pretty Healer. He remembers, vaguely, his first conversation with Potter. "So is he...here? In hospital?"

Potter's lips compress in what looks like annoyance. "Yeah, he is."

"Is he—"

"Look, I don't want to talk about it," Potter snaps.

Malfoy watches him, but Potter won't meet his gaze. He speaks hesitantly, wishing he had some remembered wisdom on which to draw. "Maybe if you talk about him—" 

Finally Potter's gaze swings to meet his, and where Malfoy expected pain, instead he sees what might be loathing. "Don't say anything," he says softly, but firmly. "I don't want to hear you talk about him. I don't want you to even think about him. You have no right."

Malfoy bristles. "I have as much right as anyone—"

"You don't," Potter snaps. "In fact," he continues, jaw tight with anger, "there is no one in the world who has less right to talk about Ron than you, unless it's Voldemort himself."

Malfoy starts to retort, but something about Potter's expression makes him hesitate, and he glances again at the photo. Potter's friend continues to wave cheerfully. "What exactly did I do to make you hate me?" he wonders aloud.

"I don't—" Potter stops, shaking his head. His tone is dull with resignation. "I can't tell you that."

"But I did do something."

A hesitation. Then, softly, "Yes."

Malfoy looks back down at the grinning teenager in the photograph. "And it had something to do with him."

Potter doesn't respond, but Malfoy doesn't require confirmation. The resentment in the Healer's eyes begins to make some sense. But she's required to be here to do her job. Potter, on the other hand....

"So why do you come here?" he asks, half-angry, half-pleading. He hates living in this world where nothing makes sense, where everyone knows the answers but him. He hates the weight of his own ignorance. "Why bother talking to me?" He gestures at the album, still lying open on his lap. "Why show me your personal photo collection?"

"Because," Potter says, looking him dead in the eye, "the sooner you get your memory back, the sooner I can put you in Azkaban. And then _I_ can forget about _you_."

* * *

That night, Malfoy doesn't dream about Harry Potter.

The dream fragments seize at him without warning, and without transition, hurtling him from one nightmare to another.

...He lowers himself on one knee, head bent, at the foot of a black-cloaked figure. He knows he dares not look up. He doesn't want to see the figure's face. Somehow he cannot believe it is even human. But that doesn't stop him genuflecting, and a thrill runs up his spine as the creature addresses him.

"Draco Malfoy, do you come here willingly?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"Do you swear to serve me all the days of your existence, to do my bidding no matter what task you are called to fulfill, and to give your life in my service if so required?"

"I do, my Lord."

"Rise, young Malfoy."

He stands, eyes still cast downward.

"Look at me."

He braces himself and looks up into a tight, snakelike face, its venomous eyes fixed on him. It almost smiles. "Your father served me well for many years, Draco." To hear himself addressed so familiarly sends a shudder through him, rooted in both revulsion and a strange ecstasy. "I have no doubt you will prove as loyal." The creature presents him with a chalice, silver with writhing snakes along its exterior. "The fruits of your first act in my service," the creature says. "Your curse was sure and effective, and the world is troubled with one fewer Mudblood." A scaly, skeletal hand waves over the chalice, and the creature murmurs low words Malfoy can't catch in a strange, hissing language he can't identify. The liquid in the cup begins to glow, and the creature's eyes fix on his. "Now drink."

Without hesitation, Malfoy brings the cup to his lips and does so, the warm, coppery taste of blood washing over his tongue, thick against his teeth. He tips the chalice back and swallows greedily, feeling the power of the spell spread through his body, a tingling in this stomach, in his veins, in his head. He extends his left arm without being prompted, and the creature presses a sharp, icy finger against his skin. Malfoy screams as the burn begins, and he looks down to see the Mark rising out of his flesh. Blood oozes down his wrist, almost black in the torchlight, and he can hear the creature laughing as his vision dims....

...He dreams of a tall, elegant man who resembles an older version of himself, blond-haired and gray-eyed and sharp-featured, wearing hauteur like a cloak. Malfoy looks up at him and knows what awe is, and pride, and destiny. The man waves a hand, and it's an economical gesture, the mark of a man who knows his very presence is impressive enough without unnecessary flourishes. His eyes are hard as he glances around the room, then turns to Malfoy, who is seated before him. "Someday," the man says, "all this will be yours, Draco."

Malfoy looks up at him and knows his eyes are wide. There is a catch in his throat, and he can almost feel the weight of the book-lined walls pressing in upon him. "Yes, Father," he says, and yes, this man is his father, who deserves his awe and his respect and the love akin to worship that burns inside him.

"Bear in mind, though," his father continues, "that I mean not only this home and its treasures, but the entire Malfoy legacy and all that entails." The firelight flickers in his eyes, twin flames and a ring of smoke. "I expect that when the time comes, you will make the right choices, Draco."

The pride threatens to burst out of his chest. "Of course, Father," he says.

His father's voice lowers. "Now that the Dark Lord has returned, we all will be called upon to show where our loyalties lie. You are very nearly at an age when you must make your own decisions regarding your future and with whom you will align yourself."

Malfoy's voice is earnest. "You know I strive to follow you in all things, Father."

His father's hand on his head is like a benediction. "You are an intelligent boy, Draco." His father's gaze meets his, and Malfoy almost can't breathe. "Just as I always seek to protect you, so must you seek to protect all the Malfoy family stands for."

"Always, Father," he swears. "I would do _anything_."

His father smiles, and there is darkness....

...He is in the same room, but alone, the only movement the writhing of the flames in the fireplace. He stares into them, not feeling any warmth, any comfort, only the insistent knowledge that something is coming, something big, something catastrophic. His palm flattens against the book laid open on the table before him, and the aged parchment crackles under the press of his fingers. He's surrounded by books and manuscripts and letters and maps, some so fragile he fears to touch them, so archaic he cannot read the incantations, so ancient the listed potion ingredients are extinct. "There must be something here," he thinks, not quite understanding. "There must be something useful in here."

Somehow the knowledge—the conviction—is there in his mind that his time is short. His avenue of communication has been shut off. He fears he is no longer trusted by those whose trust he needs. By _any_ of those whose trust he needs. More than just his fate lies in the balance. When the confrontation comes—and he knows it's soon—he will emerge either a hero or a traitor. But to whom?

He looks down, but his gaze is unfocused, the words of the text blurring before his eyes as his mind spins with thoughts of pain and resentment and regret, of messages that don't come, of kisses and Kisses…and which of the two he is likely to receive. 

He knows somehow that the doorknob will not turn for him, that there is nowhere to go, no one he can turn to. There are threats outside of this room, both inside and outside of the Manor. He's not sure which are greater. 

Potter will come, he thinks. Sooner or later, Potter will come for him, and that will be the end. His hand curls into a fist, and it is only through conscious will that he relaxes, spreading his fingers across the pages of the rotting old book. He has to be prepared, he thinks. He has to be armed.

He forces himself to focus on the book, and when he sees the words half-concealed by his fingers, his gaze sharpens:

 _The Curse of the Occluded Heart_.

His eyebrows draw together as he begins to read....

...The dreams dissolve into images that flash into his mind, one after another....

...A memorial ceremony in the rain with no body....

...A long, elegant neck hugged by a noose, blond hair falling in waves...

...The terror-bright eyes of a woman who cowers before the point of his wand as he feels the power surge inside of him: _Avada Kedavra_...

...The crackle of burning parchment, the corners turning to ash as waves of heat and ancient magic wash over him...

...Smoke, and sunset, and a dozen Aurors on the front lawn, but he is ready for them, he is ready, he is _ready_ , and he draws his wand, the curse rolling off his tongue, and there is a gasp and a shout and pain and nothing....

When he opens his eyes, his pillow is damp, and he doesn't understand why.


	6. Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 originally posted May 5, 2004.
> 
> Thank you to my betas, Bow and Maerda Erised.

_I cannot say what loves have come and gone,  
I only know that summer sang in me  
A little while, that in me sings no more._  
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Sometimes Harry dreams about Professor Snape and the disastrous Occlumency lessons his fifth year. He is an accomplished Occlumens now, and has a moderate degree of skill at Legilimency as well. But that doesn't prevent him from reliving those early lessons with Snape, the anger, the frustration, caught in a never-ending cycle of failure after failure after failure until he wakes up in a cold sweat, heart tripping in his chest. 

Usually he dreams the lessons exactly as he lived them, the memories refusing to be buried, parading through his subconscious to mock him again and again. But occasionally the circumstances change, and he is 26 and an Auror and an adult, yet somehow still Snape's reviled pupil, still a failure. The memories Snape tugs out of his mind are different these times, but his smile is as mocking, as malicious, as ever.

Harry finds himself curled into a ball on the floor, his body aching, his mind raped, his eyes pricking with tears, while Snape stands over him, a black-robed wraith peering down his long, sallow nose. "Draco Malfoy, Mr. Potter?" he intones, just a touch of a sneer in his voice. "I thought you'd got past _that_ long ago."

"I _did_ ," he says, hating this man with every molecule, hating himself. He clenches his eyes shut, trying to beat back the memories Snape has drawn forth—Malfoy leaning into him in the Potions storeroom…Malfoy standing in front of the Manor, wand pointed at Harry, a look of near exultation on his face, his wand steadier than Harry has ever seen it...Malfoy, gaze blank as Harry fists his hands in his shirtfront and slams him against the ground, his pale features blurry through the tears that threaten to spill over...Malfoy, his face somehow open, nervous—but the _good_ kind of nervous—as Harry pulls him forward so close, so close he can almost breathe him in, then the shock and betrayal as Harry steps away...Malfoy's eyes as he watches him from his narrow hospital bed, somehow waging a battle between trust and wariness, comfort and fear, anger and...he can't bear to think of it.

He wakes up sick, and sweating, and hard.

* * *

Potter's Healer friend is humming tunelessly as she breezes into Malfoy's room. He eyes her suspiciously, not inclined to be charitable after the dreams that kept him awake half the night. The humming tapers off as she begins to examine and question him.

"Any pain?"

"No more than usual."

"Nausea?"

"Not since the last Veritaserum episode."

"Sleeping well?"

"No."

"Dreaming a lot?"

"Yes."

"Are you remembering anything?"

He hesitates. "They can't be memories," he says. "They're all monsters and pain."

When she looks at him, her expression is grave. "It would surprise me greatly if your memories weren't full of monsters and pain, Malfoy." He looks away, and she sighs. "You're due for another Auror visit on Wednesday. Someone else can ask more questions about that."

He sits in sullen silence while she rubs salve into the burn on his chest, her fingers light, nimble. He can feel the coolness and tingling of the salve only outside the perimeter of the wound, where the skin hasn't become deadened to sensation. "What is that stuff supposed to do?" he asks finally. "It's not like the scar is going away."

Her gaze lifts to meet his for a moment, her eyebrow quirking upward. "It prevents further magical injury. Since we haven't figured out what caused the burn yet, we don't know if it's something that will continue to work into your skin. There are still echoes of magic in here," she says, ghosting her finger along the scar's curved edges. "We just haven't been able to figure out what kind."

"Is it Dark magic?"

One shoulder hitches upward in a terse shrug. "We can't tell. It doesn't appear to be, but no one's been able to confirm what type of magic it is."

"But it's probably Dark."

"No, Malfoy. We _can't tell_. And because we can't tell, we can't take a chance."

"Worried that I might be a danger to the people on the _right_ side of the war?" he sneers.

"Yes," she answers, her honesty catching him off guard. "But you might be just as much—or more—of a danger to yourself."

He laughs, bitterly. "Based on how everyone around here treats me, I doubt there's anyone in the world who gives a damn that I might pose a danger to myself."

"That isn't true," she says, but doesn't meet his eyes.

"Oh, yes, I forgot. The Aurors would be devastated without me to practice their interrogation techniques on."

She tosses him a brief, enigmatic look before turning deliberately to her clipboard.

Almost too casually, he adds, "And I suppose Potter would fear that something might happen to his precious photo album."

Her head snaps up at that. "What photo album?"

"The one Potter forgot to take with him yesterday after oh-so-politely telling me to fuck off and die."

He gestures vaguely toward the bedside shelf, where the crimson-bound book lies, and the Healer's lips fall open in silent recognition. She reaches a hand out, almost touching it, before she hesitates and draws her hand back. When she looks at him again, it is with greater scrutiny. "Why would Harry leave that photo album in your hands?"

"It seems your charming Auror has decided to take an active role in my memory recovery process."

She narrows her eyes at him before reaching for the book again, lifting it and stroking pale fingers along its spine. He watches expressions flicker across her face as she turns a few idle pages—sadness, affection, wonder. When she looks up at him again, her gaze curious, he gives her a bland look. "You were pretty fit when you were in school."

She seems torn between laughing and frowning, and finally raises an eyebrow as she sets the book down. "So were you," she says, and when she meets his gaze, he thinks she might even mean it.

"Potter was terribly scruffy," he says, daring her to disagree.

But she just smiles placidly. "That's part of his charm."

He snorts. "Potter couldn't charm fire from a dragon."

She shakes her head, but the smile still lurks around the corners of her mouth, and inexplicably he feels like he's accomplished something. She has a pretty smile—it takes the edges off her face, softens the lines she's too young to have. It makes her look more like the young girl he'd seen in the album, curled around Potter, her smile brilliant as sunshine as he tugged her close and pressed a kiss to one blushing cheek. Seeing that, Malfoy had wondered if Potter was ever that playful anymore. The Healer smiles like she's almost forgotten how.

He reaches for the album and flips it open to a photo of Potter and the Healer, smiling at each other like two teenagers in love, which, Malfoy thinks, is probably exactly what they are. The Healer's present-day incarnation is scratching notes on her clipboard, but glances up when she senses him looking at her. He glides a finger along the edge of the page, and when she notices the photo, he thinks he sees a slight blush creep up her cheeks. "You look good together," he says lightly.

"We're just friends," she says, then frowns at her too-quick response.

His fingers tap a quick, brief rhythm against the page, and he gives her a skeptical expression, but doesn't say anything.

She's definitely flushed now, but with anger, he thinks. "I don't have to make any excuses to you."

"I'm not asking for excuses. I didn't ask for anything."

She frowns and turns back to her clipboard, muttering under her breath.

He watches the photo a little longer, curious when he notices the Healer's gaze keeps flicking almost infinitesimally over Potter's shoulder at something outside the frame of the photo, and her expression isn't as carefree as it seems. Potter, for that matter, has shadows under his eyes that even the broad (and, he suspects, genuine) grin doesn't hide.

"Why does Potter look ill?" he asks.

The Healer looks up sharply. "What?"

"In this photo." He taps a finger against it. "There are hollows under his eyes. He couldn't have been healthy."

She blinks, looking confused for a moment, before she shakes her head. "He wasn't ill. He was just tired. He hadn't been sleeping."

She tries to go back to her paperwork, but he interrupts again. "Why wasn't he sleeping?"

"Nightmares," she says shortly, not looking up. Her tone is matter-of-fact, as if this is common knowledge. For all he knows, it might be. "He had insomnia because of his nightmares." Her quill scratches as she continues to murmur, "He used to wander the school grounds before dawn. Said watching the sunrise was soothing."

Something about that jars his memory, and he speaks without thinking. "By the lake?"

That draws her attention, and her eyes are sharp. "How did you know that?"

"I—" He shakes his head. "He must have mentioned it."

"Maybe," she says, still clearly suspicious. She lowers her clipboard, frowning again. "We have some additional tests scheduled for this afternoon. Someone will be here at two to escort you to Examination Room 3."

"Why bother?" he mutters. "You never learn anything anyway."

She ignores his comment and strides out the door. It's only after she leaves that he realizes he still has his hand pressed to the photo. He frowns and flips the page, then stops and stares at the photo before him. It's a wide shot, showing Potter, the Healer, and her brother, all in red Quidditch uniforms. To the left—in the direction the Healer's eyes had been glancing in the previous picture—is a figure in a similar, green uniform.

The face looking back is his own.

* * *

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement is surprisingly quiet this morning as Harry isolates himself in his small office at the rear of Auror Headquarters. Even the usual racket of Tonks knocking over assorted office equipment is absent, since she's been called to give a statement before the Wizengamot about one of the suspected Death Eaters apprehended last month. Many of the other Aurors are on assignment; he doesn't know where. Such knowledge is always limited to protect the safety of everyone in the department. In the absence of his colleagues, Harry takes out a file labeled "MALFOY, DRACO" and murmurs a spell to remove the Reduction charm from the stack of parchment it contains, so that, restored to its actual size, it towers over everything else on his desk, teetering precariously. He frowns at it before beginning to page through the file. The photograph of Malfoy, still pinned over his desk, watches with a smug expression.

Ignoring the intent gray eyes, Harry sifts through the pages until he comes to the one he's looking for, bearing the Excalibur emblem of the Secret Wizarding Operations for Research and Development. "Examination of Wand: Malfoy, Draco" reads the heading, and snatches of notes in Remus's small, neat handwriting trail across the page. The wand, notes the report, was the same one he was on record as having purchased from Ollivander's in 1991, but _Priori Incantatem_ was inconclusive. Harry reads:

> _There is no evidence that the wand has been used to perform the Killing Curse at any time in the recent past. The last spell performed takes the shape of a cloud and a heart. Our team thus far has been unable to match this signature with any spell on record in Ministry files. Other spells revealed as having been performed in the last two years include only everyday household spells like creating fire and illumination, and a peculiar modified transportation spell resembling those currently in experimental use by the Optimally and Universally Trained Wizarding Intelligence Teams, leading us to speculate that the Death Eaters may be using alternate methods of communication undetectable to Ministry Intelligence. This bears further examination._

Surely, Harry thinks, the Death Eaters have been working to discover some way to prevent their wands from revealing evidence of their murders. Azkaban is filled with Death Eaters whose sinister activities were revealed by using _Priori Incantatem_ on their wands, making obtaining a Death Eater's intact wand a matter of paramount importance. Dark wizards have on occasion been known to destroy their own wands when capture is imminent, often through a self-destruct charm applied to the wand itself. Of course, _Priori Incantatem_ can't prove or disprove the influence of the Imperius Curse, but it goes a long way toward establishing the guilt of the accused.

Harry has wondered if the lack of evidence of _Avada Kedavra_ is a result of Malfoy's curse going wrong rather than its not actually having been cast. Something had hit Harry, after all. Closing his eyes, he can still feel the magic that sizzled along his skin a split second before a force like a battering ram plowed into his chest and his scar burnt like fire. Perhaps there was no murdered shade to be found in Malfoy's wand because Harry didn't die—again.

The battery of tests he'd been subjected to after the Malfoy raid had also been inconclusive. The evidence seemed to indicate a residue of _Avada Kedavra_ skimming the edges of his own magical signature, but of course he wasn't dead, and there weren't even any new scars to show for it. More puzzling had been the spike in magical energy the Healers had measured around him immediately after the raid. They'd quarantined him for a week, during which time the energy dissipated, seemingly harmlessly, until his energy levels returned to normal. "It's almost like a shield," one of the Healers had told him by way of explanation. "There's some kind of magic in your skin that isn't normally there." But they hadn't known what it was, hadn't been able to figure it out even after days of testing—the energy field actually had thrown off the results of some of the tests, so he'd been subjected to even more experiments than usual.

The oddest thing, he remembers, is that certain spells hadn't seemed to affect him at all in the first day or so, particularly anything that might be perceived as harmful, as when one of the other Aurors participating in the Manor raid had attempted to Stun him, to stop him slamming Malfoy's head into the ground over and over. The spell had glanced off him, though Malfoy had stopped struggling, so perhaps the spell had been misdirected. Certain healing spells hadn't worked on him either, though, like when one of the Healers attempted to take blood from his arm—even after several attempts, the skin would not yield to the magic. They'd finally resorted to pricking his arm with a needle, like a Muggle. But when the same Healer removed the bruise on his chest, there'd been no problem at all.

"Have you applied any protection charms recently?" the Healer had asked, perplexed.

"No," Harry had said. "Nothing since—" He stopped, frowning and touching his scar, and the Healer, knowing the story—as everyone did—didn't ask further.

Harry had wondered if his mother's sacrifice would endure so many years later. Perhaps he was somehow immune to the Killing Curse, and that was why his magic was heightened in the aftermath of the raid.

He'd run the idea by Remus one night, not long after he'd been released from the hospital, as they sat companionably sipping firewhisky by the hearth. "It's possible," Remus responded, frowning as he considered. "I think it would require a very deep love to cast a charm that would protect someone against the Killing Curse. Of course," he said, smiling a little sadly as he looked at Harry's scar, "we already know Lily's sacrifice had that sort of power. Whether it's lasted this long...." He shrugged. "It's not something I'd be comfortable subjecting to a clinical test, that's all I'll say." Harry had reached over and squeezed his narrow hand in understanding.

Harry sighs at the memory and rubs at the tension in his forehead, feeling the slight ridge of his scar rough against his fingertips. It frustrates him that none of the mysteries surrounding the Malfoy raid have been solved. Ron is still in a coma. Malfoy has no memory. Most of the Malfoys are dead. And Harry lives on. That's what he _does_ , after all. He Lived.

He knows the Ministry has its hands full, that SWORD is stretched beyond its means and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has lost countless good witches and wizards in the line of duty, many of them his friends and colleagues. He has heard rumors of Intelligence breakdowns, links in the spy network that have gone missing without explanation and left OUTWIT in the lurch, or with erroneous information that has cost lives. He knows they're all doing the best they can.

He narrows his eyes at the preening photo of Draco Malfoy, then his gaze slides away, and he covers his face with his hands. He has to remind himself: _They're doing the best they can._

If only he didn't sometimes have difficulty believing that of himself.

* * *

Ginny stops to look in on Malfoy at the end of her shift, hovering in the doorway when she sees he's asleep, curled on his side, the last rays of late summer evening sunlight limning his silhouette, turning his hair more gold than white. She thinks there might be shadows under his eyes, but that could be simply the effects of the light.

She won't allow herself to feel sorry for Draco Malfoy, and her patience as a Healer is tested each time she has to examine him. She refuses to ask for reassignment, though, especially now that Ron is housed upstairs. And there is no question of moving Malfoy. St. Mungo's is too open, too public, and none of the other field hospitals set up during the war is as secure as this one. So they are stuck with each other.

She knows she was put on Malfoy's case because the Ministry trusts her. Given her father's position and the loss of two brothers—maybe three soon—to the war, her loyalty to the cause has never been doubted. She received top marks in her Healer training program and could have found herself on the fast track to becoming one of the top Healers in Britain. St. Mungo's had offered her a coveted position in the Artemis Merriweather ward, working with victims of near-irreversible spell damage, which offered potential for advancement and even fame, but she'd turned her back on it to join the war effort. Even now, watching Malfoy's slumbering form with unease, she cannot regret her choice.

As much as she loves her job, loves what she is able to do for most of the people who come under her care, she still feels sometimes as if the walls of this building are pressing in on her. She can shrug off her Healer's robes, but the responsibility of her position is never lifted from her shoulders, and she can never be certain of a full night's sleep or an uninterrupted break. These days, she almost hopes to be awakened by a nighttime summons—anything to prevent the fitful dreams that keep her tossing and turning and leave her waking up more tired than she'd been when she went to bed.

Malfoy turns in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible, and she frowns. She wishes, fervently at times, that he _did_ remember her, so she could tell him what she thinks, and hex him for hurting the people around him any more than he already has, both now and in all the years leading up to this "You didn't listen to me," she whispers, low and angrily. "You never listened to anybody, did you?"

His eyes flutter open, and she freezes at the thought that he's heard her. "Whozair?" She takes a step backward, hoping to leave without disturbing him further, but his gaze sharpens on her. "Ah," he says quietly. "The Angel of Mercy."

She pauses with what she knows is ill-concealed poor grace. "Hardly. And that's a very Muggle image, wouldn't you say?"

He lies facing her, and his exposed shoulder moves in what is probably intended as a shrug. "Must have picked it up somewhere."

"Go back to sleep," she says and turns away.

His voice stops her. "You're angry at me."

She looks back over her shoulder, and he is half-shrouded in shadow, hair gilded in dying sunlight, eyes strangely intent on her. "Why would I be angry at you?"

"You tell me."

She gives one short, dismissive shake of her head. "It's nothing."

"Nothing I'd remember, you mean?"

She expels an impatient breath. "It doesn't matter."

He sits up, an oddly fluid movement for someone so thin and angular, and the shadows around him deepen. "Oh, I think it does matter," he says softly. "I know you dislike me."

Her look is stern. "You are my patient."

"Not by your choice."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

She thinks he might be smiling. "You can't allow yourself the luxury of hating me outright. But I know you want to."

"I don't—"

"Is he a good fuck?"

She stops dead. "What?"

"Potter."

"What? He—"

"That bad, huh. I suspected so."

"You—you vile, horrible—"

He's definitely smirking now. "There, that feels better, doesn't it?"

She takes a sharp, deep breath, then another, slower one. "You would be well advised not to antagonize one of the few people working to keep you alive and healthy."

He shrugs and turns away, giving her his profile. "Maybe I don't care about that as much as I should."

She closes her eyes briefly. "Go to sleep."

He doesn't look at her, but the corner of his mouth twists downward.

A perhaps unwise impulse makes her pause on her way out the door, fingers on the doorframe as she half-turns back to him. "Oh, and Malfoy?"

He looks at her, gaze shadowed.

"Just for your information, he's bloody _amazing_."

He bares his teeth, and she pulls the door closed behind her with a click.

* * *

After the Healer leaves, it takes a long time for Malfoy to find sleep again, especially given the dream she'd woken him from: Potter, all white skin and long (though rather knobby and awkward) limbs, spread on Malfoy's bed like an offering to the gods. He tries, with only moderate success, to shove the image from his mind.

With the door closed, the room is soundproofed to prevent exterior noises from entering, though he knows he is constantly monitored somehow. He lies in near-darkness and imagines he can hear the sounds of the hospital settling into evening around him—Healers and Mediwitches and –wizards going on and off shift, visitors entering or departing, new arrivals being whisked into emergency care, recovered patients being checked out to reenter the world on their own terms.

It's a pleasant fantasy, in some ways, the notion that there is a way out of here, that there might be a free existence for him beyond these repressive walls. He suspects, though, that such an outcome for him is less likely than Potter locking himself into Malfoy's room, stripping down, and offering to act out his wildest fantasies.

Sad that his wildest fantasy at this point is the ability to resume a normal life—whatever that entails.

Surprisingly, when he drifts off, he dreams not of Potter the Amazing Fuck, but of the skinny Healer, adorned in braids and school robes, her eyes hot and her words cold. He thinks she might be warning him, but his ears are filled with the roar of silence, and he knows only that he is angry—angry, and perhaps a little hurt, though he'd never admit it, _never_ —before the dream fades into nothingness and he forgets it, as he has forgotten everything else that ever mattered.


	7. True

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 originally posted May 21, 2004.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my beta, Bow. This chapter dedicated with affection to the lovely Bonibaru.

_Time does not bring relief; you all have lied  
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!_  
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

When Harry returns to the hospital the next morning, the sunrise is painting the room in shades of rose, and there is a new plant on the table by Ron's bedside. Curious, he plucks at the tag and sees it's from Neville and Luna. " _Arethusa bulbosa_ : Dragon's Mouth," reads Neville's firm, painstakingly neat hand. Harry fingers the flower's rosy petals with a tight smile at the plant's colloquial name, and almost laughs when he reads Luna's loopy, delicate postscript: "American wizards say Dragon's Mouth is especially useful in repelling Hairy-Snouted Bogbaggles, should you ever encounter one, Ronald. I understand they also flee at the sound of Muggle novelty songs, so Neville and I are learning some. He does a stirring rendition of 'Purple People Eater.' We'll teach it to you when we return." Harry sighs at the thought. He'd love to see Ron sit up and begin to sing along with Neville and Luna in his trademark off-key baritone, even "Purple People Eater."

He sits in the chair next to the bed and stretches out his legs, watching Ron's chest subtly rising and falling with his slow, almost too-shallow breaths, but doesn't really have anything to say. Today he craves sound—he wants to be talked to, aches almost physically to hear the sound of Ron's voice, _really_ hear Ron's voice, not just some poor approximation in his own head. But he talks anyway. No one knows whether Ron can hear him, wherever he is right now.

"Nice flowers you have there, Ron," he says, feeling the dawn light warming the back of his neck. "It was good of Neville and Luna to send them. They must still be in the States—Neville mentioned something about exploring the native flora of New Jersey. Word must have reached them somehow. I'm still sorry I couldn't make it to their wedding last year, especially since you said you had such a good time."

He stops and looks down at his hands, fingers twining and untwining in his lap. He casts around for something else to talk about.

"I haven't heard anything from Hermione lately," he says at last. "She's probably still somewhere it's too risky to send owls. But she must be all right, or surely we would have heard something. I mean, at least the Ministry would have notified her parents, and your father would have heard about it. She's likely safer where she is than either of us is."

He watches Ron continue to breathe, and a decade's worth of exasperation bubbles to the surface. "Why didn't you ever _say_ something to her, mate? Damn it, _I_ knew how you felt about her—how hard could it have been to tell her you fancy her, or just to find an excuse to kiss her? It's not like there was anything to prevent you from getting together. You were friends, you were on the same side of the war, your families liked each other." He laughs a little. "And I was all for it, if only to stop you watching her like a lonely puppy. She would have been good for you, Ron. And I think you'd be good for her."

He sighs. "I know, I know. It's hard. But she _looked_ at you, Ron, you know what I mean. But you never believed me, did you? She wouldn't have said no. And even if she had, or if it hadn't worked out, at least you'd know. You wouldn't still be wondering. And maybe—maybe this wouldn't have happened." He grimaces and closes his eyes briefly, willing a face that is not Hermione's to leave his mind.

"Your family seem to be doing well enough, considering," he says. "I ran into your father at the Ministry the other day, and he invited me to dinner when Charlie comes home next month. I'm sure Charlie's desperate to see you. Maybe you'll even be out of here by then," he murmurs, willing it to be true.

"When you get out of here," Harry says, closing his eyes and tilting his head back as he slouches into the chair, "I'm going to take you out for a night of drinking like you've never experienced before—I'll get you even more pissed than you were that night a few years back when you drank yourself into a stupor over Hermione leaving for her assignment in Bulgaria. And then—" His voice cracks. "—I'm going to beat the living shit out of you for giving me such a scare."

He opens his eyes and looks at the still figure on the bed with a hollow expression. "You'd damn well better live long enough to give me that satisfaction, Ron."

* * *

Harry tells himself he is leaving the hospital and heading straight to the Ministry, that he's not making any detours along the way, that he's certainly not stopping to see anyone else in the hospital, not even Ginny, if she's working this morning. Yet somehow he finds his feet carrying him to the Obscure Maladies ward and a certain closed door at the end of the corridor. He can feel the prickle of magic along his skin as he walks through the spell-barrier that keeps this end of the ward secure against unauthorized intruders. The protective wall of magic prevents any but particular Healers, mediwitches and –wizards, and high-security clearance Ministry personnel from entering. Walking through the barrier always leaves him feeling slightly uneasy and disoriented, almost like a brush with Legilimency, as the spells swirl around him to verify his magical signature. Every step has been taken to prevent the discovery of Malfoy's whereabouts—though Malfoy doesn't realize it, every time he is taken from the room to undergo tests or attempted treatments, he is put under a low-level glamour that makes him appear plain and forgettable. Pushing open the door to find Malfoy curled lazily on top of his bedclothes, head bent over a familiar photo album, Harry wonders at the power of a glamour that can make anyone think this man unremarkable.

Malfoy glances up at the _shoosh_ of the door opening, frowning when he spots Harry. Without greeting, he turns his face back to the album in his lap, an obvious dismissal that makes Harry take a breath and close the door behind him with perhaps more force than absolutely necessary. "Good morning," he says.

Malfoy grunts.

"Have you been enjoying my photographs?" Harry asks, voice a little louder, and even he can hear an edge of irrational anger.

Malfoy looks up at him and blinks, expression blank. "No," he says. "But _enjoymen_ t isn't really the point, is it, Potter?"

Harry stares back at him, and Malfoy's gaze turns challenging before he scowls and turns back to the photo album, looking every inch the offended aristocrat, costumed improbably in rumpled pajamas. He wonders how Malfoy can appear so fierce and yet so delicate at the same time. Harry doesn't remember this strange fragility from their school days—although Malfoy was always on the small side (much like Harry himself), he'd been lean rather than merely thin. Harry can remember the sensation of sinking his fist into Malfoy's stomach after that horrible Quidditch game in their fifth year, and there'd been nothing delicate about him then. He's not certain if it's this hospitalization that's seemed to have sapped the strength from Malfoy, or if it was something before that, from those mysterious missing years between when Lucius Malfoy received the Kiss and the fateful raid on Malfoy Manor. It's almost enough to make a person feel protective, he muses, looking at the haughty tilt of Malfoy's nose. _Almost_.

Annoyed by Malfoy's stubborn refusal to welcome him, Harry moves to the edge of the bed and peers down at the album. He sees Malfoy's fingers twitch once, almost unnoticeably, as he draws closer.

The album is open to a particularly nice shot Hermione took from the stands—Harry smiles a little as he watches himself streak into the frame in a blur of color and grab the Snitch out from under Malfoy's fingers. Malfoy's expression in the photograph appears to be nothing so much as pure hatred. Harry's younger self pivots on his broomstick and turns his back to his (again) defeated rival, Snitch held over his head in one triumphant fist. If he were to close his eyes now, he could still hear Ron's whoop of exultation, Hagrid's booming approval, and the cheers and whistles and stomps of the spectators as he clinched another Quidditch Cup victory for Gryffindor.

"Pleasant memories, Malfoy?" he says lightly.

Malfoy's fingers tighten on the book's edges. "Do you enjoy it, Potter?"

Harry glances at Malfoy's face, but the other man's gaze remains stubbornly on the photo album. "Enjoy what?"

"Telling me in different ways that even if I were to recover my memory, my life isn't one worth going back to."

"I—what?" Startled, he searches Malfoy's face more intently. "That's not—"

"Oh, come off it, Potter," he sneers, and now he is looking at Harry, his expression a combination of anger and confusion and hurt pride and even, perhaps, hate. "You come waltzing in here whenever you feel like it and taunt me with knowledge I don't have about things I can't remember. You tell me what a failure I've been—filthy Death Eater, no friends, no family, couldn't even win a bloody _Quidditch_ match back at school." He slams the book closed. "Telling me how much you hate me and parading around here looking fit and rumpled and dangling things in front of me I can never have—" He cuts off abruptly and turns away, taking a slow breath. "Why the fuck do you bother coming?" he asks, more quietly. "Does it give you some sort of thrill to bait me? Trying to make me miserable? I think the war's already taken care of that for you."

Harry stares at him, mouth open, as Malfoy keeps his face averted. A muscle jumps in Malfoy's cheek, and the only sound in the room is their breathing—Harry's in surprised bursts, Malfoy's slow but shallow, clearly under tight rein.

Harry speaks slowly. "I didn't mean—"

Malfoy's harsh laughter cuts him off. "Potter, I'm starting to believe that what you think you mean and what you actually mean are two very, very different things." He thumps the photo album against his lap, and Harry can see that Malfoy's knuckles are white. " _Why_ would you bring this, Potter? Why would you think it would help me recover my memory, when the only times I appear in it, I'm either losing a Quidditch match or on the receiving end of a suspicious look from your bloody girlfriend?"

Harry blinks. "What? Ginny—"

"That's not the _point_ , Potter!" He presses his palms against the cover of the book, long fingers appearing absurdly thin and white against the cherry-red leather, and he doesn't meet Harry's gaze. "It's obvious I was only a bit player in your life. Not a friend, possibly something of a rival"—Harry coughs a little, and Malfoy ignores him—"but certainly nothing pleasant. I know you're angry with me—fuck, _everyone_ seems to be angry with me—but I don't see how painting this unflattering portrait of my former life is going to make me _want_ to remember it."

Harry looks away to where the morning light is brightening the world outside the window. "You want a flattering portrait?" he says, voice expressionless. "How's this: You were the bloody king of Slytherin House. Other Slytherins followed your lead almost without question. They were in such awe of the Malfoy name, you had them in the palm of your hand. You got top marks in Potions every single year, and no one in our year could touch you, except maybe Hermione. Of course, not everyone could be Snape's pet, but he didn't exactly suffer fools. You were—" he stumbles a little, and Malfoy looks up at him "—there was something about you, and I—" He stops and glances away again, his face tight. "I didn't take those photos," he says.

The room is silent except for the small sound of Malfoy lightly scratching his fingernails along the album's ridged cover. Finally Malfoy says, "Why do I remember sunrises?"

Harry stills.

"I dream about them often," Malfoy continues, "and you're almost always there. I know you said they weren't memories, but—" He looks up at Harry.

"They—might be," Harry admits.

Malfoy watches him for a moment. "I don't understand."

Harry frowns and averts his gaze. "Neither do I."

 

* * *

"Malfoy's starting to remember things."

Moody looks up, both eyes unnervingly intent on Harry, who has just walked into his office at the end of the workday. There are dozens of charms and anti-intruder hexes around the office, so nobody ever catches Moody truly off-guard. After a few moments of silent examination, he looks back down at his paperwork, but his magic eye remains on Harry, who resists the urge to squirm under its pale scrutiny. "And what makes you think that?" he asks.

Harry has considered his approach carefully. "When he looked at the photo album I brought to the hospital, he said he'd dreamt about Quidditch."

"Maybe he read about Quidditch in the _Prophet_."

"No, sir, he specifically dreamed he was flying, playing Quidditch against me. He recognized the uniforms in a photo."

Moody looks up at him again, gaze now frankly assessing. "Why did you bring him a photo album, Potter?"

Harry freezes. "Sir?"

"I wasn't aware that was part of your orders."

"No, it's not, but—"

"I understand you've been to see Malfoy quite a lot."

"Only a few times."

"Why?"

"Why do I visit Malfoy?"

"That's what I'm asking you, Potter."

He frowns, puzzled. "To help him recover his memory."

"And that is why you have been seen at dawn in the Obscure Maladies ward at Field Hospital Number 7 not just once, but twice?"

"I—" He closes his mouth, frowns again.

"Do you have an answer for me, Potter?"

"Sir, I—I only wanted to do my job—"

Moody sighs and rises from his chair, leg thumping as he makes his way to a cabinet against the wall. He pulls out his wand and grunts something that causes one of the cabinet doors to swing open. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this, Potter."

"Sir?"

"You'll remember, of course, the agreement all Aurors sign before being admitted to the corps—"

"Yes, but—"

"—including section 8, paragraph 3, clause G."

Harry blinks at him. "I—"

Moody reaches deep into the recesses of the cabinet to draw out a small bottle whose label appears familiar to Harry, and his breath catches at his suspicion. "'If at any time,'" Moody quotes, "'the Chief Auror is provided justifiable cause to suspect that an Auror's actions could endanger the success of a mission or the well-being of other Aurors, the Chief Auror reserves the right to require the Auror in question to submit to immediate examination under Veritaserum by the Chief Auror. Refusal of said request will result in termination.'"

He can feel the blood draining from his face. "Veritaserum?"

Moody eyes him. "You have nothing to be afraid of, do you?"

Harry draws himself up. "No, sir. I do not."

"Have a seat."

Harry gingerly sits down in the high-backed wooden chair Moody keeps in front of his desk, and shifts a little, thinking he's never experienced a chair so uncomfortable. Then again, knowing Moody as he does, he's certain it was chosen for that exact reason.

Moody stands over him, the bottle in his blunt-fingered hands. "Mouth open." Harry complies, feeling resentment simmering under his skin as Moody lifts the dropper over his tongue. "I am sorry about this, Potter," Moody says in a gruff way that could almost seem truly apologetic before a single drop hits Harry's tongue and he feels his consciousness start to close around him. Moody watches, detached, as Harry's muscles go slack.

"How are you feeling right now, Potter?" Moody asks.

"Angry," Harry responds automatically.

"Why angry?"

"Because my loyalty and professionalism are being questioned. And because I hate Veritaserum."

"Do you have many secrets, Potter?"

"Some. Not too many."

"Any you wouldn't want me to discover?"

"Yes." Inwardly, Harry winces.

Moody makes a _hmm_ noise. "When did you first visit Draco Malfoy at the hospital?"

"Six weeks ago."

"Why did you go?"

"Because I knew he was there, and I wanted to see him."

"Why did you want to see him?"

"Partly because I didn't believe he'd completely lost his memory."

"Did you hope to uncover his ruse?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I didn't think he'd be able to stand having me in the same room. I thought he would crack."

"Do you believe now that he's lost his memory?"

"Yes, I do."

"Why?"

"Because he can't be this good an actor. And he hasn't tried to hurt me."

"You think Malfoy will want to hurt you?"

"Yes."

"Why is that?"

"Because he tried to kill me the day of the raid."

"We don't know that for sure."

Even through the Veritaserum, Harry's voice is bitter. "It can't have been anything else."

"What makes you say that?"

"The look of triumph on his face when he leveled his wand at me, and after Bellatrix tried to cast the Killing Curse, he laughed until Ron hit him."

"If that's the case, why endanger yourself by going to see him?"

The answer is simple. "He hurt Ron somehow. He tried to kill me. I had to see him."

"How do you feel about Draco Malfoy?"

"I hate him."

"But you've always hated Malfoy, right?"

"Yes. But—"

"But?"

"I once thought I didn't."

"When did you not think you hated him?"

"Seventh year at Hogwarts, for a little while."

"How did you feel about him then?"

"I—" This truth is less simple, so his words come more hesitantly. "I thought we were becoming friends. I thought…."

"You thought what, Potter?"

He tries to hold the answer inside, but the compulsion of the Veritaserum is too strong. "I thought I might…love him."

The answer seems to catch Moody off-guard. "You loved him?"

"I thought I did."

"How did he feel about you?"

"He was attracted to me. I thought he might be falling in love with me." His nostrils flare in anger. "But it was all a lie."

"What makes you say that?"

"If he'd really cared, he wouldn't have joined the Death Eaters."

"Did you tell him not to join the Death Eaters?"

"Not directly."

"Were the two of you—romantically involved?"

"No," Harry says. "Nothing ever happened. We barely even touched each other."

"Barely even? How _did_ you touch?"

"Well, we fought sometimes. And—I would try to touch him in little ways."

"How?"

"Brushing against him in the hallways. Touching his hand when he walked by. Things like that."

"Why did you do that?"

The truth comes to Harry easily. "Because I needed to."

"How did Malfoy respond to these touches?"

"He got angry with me at first. Then he sort of—tolerated them."

"What do you mean, 'tolerated them'?"

"Well, he stopped glaring at me. He didn't flinch away."

"Did he ever try to touch you in return?"

Harry can't help the note of disappointment that creeps into his voice. "Not like that."

"How, then?"

"Shoving me, pushing me away, ramming into me during a Quidditch match. Nothing different from what he'd always done."

"What made you think Malfoy might care about you?"

"We used to sit together and watch the sun rise over the lake at Hogwarts every morning. I was dreaming about Voldemort and couldn't sleep. I still don't know why he started coming out there."

"What did he do there by the lake?"

"He just sat there, looking sullen. He was annoyed when I first started to talk to him. We argued. But he kept coming. And we stopped arguing. And he used to—look at me."

"Look at you how?"

"Like he wanted me."

"Did he ever say anything to that effect?"

"No. No."

"How do you think he feels about you now?"

"I think he's attracted to me."

"What makes you say that?"

"He talks to me, and I know he doesn't talk that casually with anyone else at the hospital. He indicated he finds me—physically attractive." He pauses, but the truth pushes out. "He calls out my name in his sleep."

"I understand you used to talk about Voldemort in your sleep. Did that have any romantic implication?"

"No! Of course not!"

"And you think you were wrong about Malfoy's feelings for you at Hogwarts, correct?"

"Yes," he says, voice a mixture of resentment and regret.

"Then how can you be sure you're right this time, when you weren't back at school?"

"I—can't be sure. But I suspect I'm right."

"And what do you plan to do about it if you are right?"

"Let him suffer."

"Like you suffered?"

"Yes."

Moody eyes him contemplatively for a moment, then asks, "Like you still suffer?"

The truth is there inside of him, undeniable. "Yes," Harry whispers.

"What do you plan to do if Malfoy recovers his memory?"

"Make sure he goes to Azkaban."

"What if he isn't guilty?"

"He is. I'm sure of it."

"Will it bother you if he is guilty and goes to Azkaban?"

"I—a little."

"Why is that?"

"Because—it will confirm that I was completely wrong about him at Hogwarts, and that I deluded myself for years."

"How did you feel when you saw that he was still alive?"

"Relieved, first. Then angry, when I realized who he'd been hiding with."

"Did you hate him when you first saw him that evening?"

"Not entirely. Not until—after."

"How did you feel when he was missing?"

"Hopeful. I always hoped that we would find him and that he hadn't joined the Death Eaters at all—or else that he had died rather than join them."

"Would you rather he had died than be found where he was?"

Harry's eyes close. "Yes."

"What if he never recovers his memory?"

"He will. It's already coming back to him."

"But what if he doesn't? What if you're wrong?"

"I…I don't know."

"Will you continue to visit him?"

"Probably."

"Do you think you can hate him forever?"

"I don't know. I want to."

"But can you?"

"I don't know. It worries me that I don't know."

"Could you fall in love with him again?"

"I—maybe. Maybe." Even through the Veritaserum, the thought frightens him.

"Have you ever truly fallen out of love with him?"

"I thought I had. But—I'm not sure."

"Why did you not tell the Chief Auror any of this when you were assigned to the Malfoy case?"

"I was never asked about it directly. Kingsley knew we'd been rivals at school, and he considered that an asset to my ability to find Malfoy."

"And you never thought to volunteer this additional information?"

"No. Kingsley knew I hated Malfoy."

"But you _didn't_ hate Malfoy then."

"I have _always_ hated Malfoy. Always. Even when I thought I might love him, some part of me hated him for being what he was, and for what he might become."

"And Shacklebolt didn't think to question you further?"

"Apparently not."

"That's the sort of oversight that gets good Aurors killed," Moody growls.

"Kingsley's death had nothing to do with this case!"

"I know that, boy. But if an Auror is to survive and be successful in his work, he must always know the full picture, everything about his subject—and the Chief Auror must know everything about the Aurors he assigns to cases. Constant vigilance!" he roars, thumping his fist into his palm. "It isn't enough just to be aware of your physical surroundings, Potter. You must know every single fact about your subject. What kind of pants does he wear? What is his favorite flavor of Bertie Botts Bean? What—"

"Green. Silk. And pomegranate."

Startled out of his rant, Moody blinks at Harry. "What?"

"Draco Malfoy's pants: green silk. And he prefers the pomegranate beans. Or used to, anyway. I don't imagine he's had any in a while."

"Don't change the subject, Potter."

"You asked the questions."

Moody snorts. "So I did." He eyes Harry. "Is the Veritaserum starting to wear off?"

"I can't tell."

"How do you feel right now?"

"Nauseous. A little dizzy."

Moody nods. "Give it another half-hour before you leave the office. This batch is designed to be full strength for only about 20 minutes, and then to clear out of the bloodstream quickly. Wouldn't do to have Aurors wandering about under the effects of Veritaserum."

Harry watches him, feeling the haze start to clear from his brain, a little shaky to realize all he has revealed. For all Moody's talk about knowing his subjects and underlings, he is horrified by how much he has not known about himself. He has just given Moody every reason to fire him.

As if hearing his thoughts, Moody speaks again. "I'm going to have to suspend you, Potter." Harry's eyes close in defeat, but open again at Moody's next words. "I'm not firing you. I can't. You're too damned good an Auror, and I don't want all this getting out, which it would have to, if I fired you. The official story will be that you're taking a leave of absence to spend more time with your dying friend." Harry makes a noise of protest, but Moody talks over him. "There will be a great deal of sympathy and people will leave you alone." Harry holds his gaze for a moment, on the brink of arguing, then nods in reluctant acquiescence. Moody considers. "Of course, this is merely official. Unofficially, I suspect I still will have need of your skills. And Voldemort, of course, doesn't take time out for suspensions." Harry sighs, relieved at this small reprieve. "I will reinstate you in two months," Moody continues, "or whenever the Malfoy case closes—whichever comes last."

"He _is_ recovering his memory," Harry insists.

"I believe that you think that. I'm just not sure it isn't wishful thinking on your part, Potter. Neither the Healers nor the Aurors have discovered anything that conclusively indicates his memory has come back."

Harry frowns, but doesn't respond.

Moody stows his wand in its holster and thumps his way to the door. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes to let you go home. Just sit tight until then." The door bangs shut behind him, and Harry sits blinking at the one small window in Moody's office, and the lone, long sunbeam that paints a stripe of watery gold across the floor. The days, he thinks dully, are getting shorter.

* * *

That evening, when Harry lets himself into his flat, there is no one to greet him—no friendly flatmate, no smiling lover, not even any pets. Crookshanks is probably right where Harry left him this morning, curled in Harry's unmade bedding. Anything resembling a warm greeting would be beneath him. Not for the first time, Harry wishes he could have talked himself into getting a dog, something large and friendly that would jump on guests (if he ever had any) and require walks (if Harry were ever there to go on them) and sleep at the foot of Harry's bed (if Harry's persistent dreams didn't send it fleeing). But it wouldn't be fair to subject a dog to the irregularity of the life he leads. Besides, every glance would just serve as a reminder, and Harry has enough memories to haunt him already.

He sits down at the kitchen table and rests his forehead on his folded arms. The room is dark and slightly chill around him—the sun set not long ago, and he walked the streets of Muggle London, his hands stowed in his pockets, eyes fixed on the pavement, oblivious to the crowds and the noise. He'd walked for hours; he's not sure where he was. Now he lets the quiet settle around him like a blanket, feeling invisible even without his father's cloak.

There is a small _pop_ next to his ear, and something falls against his fingers. He sits up, startled, and reaches for his wand ("Don't tell me you're still keeping it in your pocket, Potter?" Moody had growled at him this afternoon. "How many times do I have to tell you—"), murmuring " _Lumos_." In the soft glow, he sees that the object is a heavy white envelope, clear of markings but for his name in firm black script. From the Intelligence office, Harry thinks. He vaguely recalls Remus describing how the Ministry has been experimenting with instant communication, like letters charmed to Apparate to specific individuals, for use in Intelligence ops.

Sighing, he runs his thumb under the flap and pulls out a square of parchment covered in what he immediately recognizes as Hermione's neat handwriting. _Dear Harry_ , he reads, and finds himself smiling in spite of himself, realizing he's missed her more than he even knew.

He skims the letter quickly, then halts.

My mission is very nearly at a close, and I'll be back in England almost before you know it. Home! I miss everybody desperately, and I've begun to dream of seeing you and Ron again, only to wake disappointed every morning when I realize it's only another dream. But soon it will be reality—never soon enough!


His breath catches and he rereads to be sure he isn't mistaken. But he's not—the evidence is right in front of him.

Hermione is coming home.


	8. Honesty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8 originally posted July 13, 2004.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Bow and Supergrover24, and to Maerda Erised for squeeage and support. This chapter dedicated with great fondness to Camilla Farfalla.

_An honest man's the noblest work of God._  
—Alexander Pope

The room is almost completely still but for the nearly inaudible rhythm of breath and the subtle thrum of magic in the air, just buzzing at the edge of Ginny's consciousness. She rubs her palms against her knees, glad she's taken off her green Healer's robes with their slightly slick texture, crafted and charmed as they are to repel stains (bodily fluids, potions, and the like) and the odd hex. They are useful, and have saved her from harm on more than one occasion, but the friction of her dry palms against serviceable black cotton summer robes is somehow much more satisfying.

"I'm worried about Harry," she says.

There's no response, of course. There never is. Ginny grew up with a surfeit of older brothers—always someone to horse around with, to cry on, to hex. Fun-loving and fiercely protective, they left her in awe sometimes of their height and their strength and the power of their laughter, and their affection for her even when she didn't feel like she deserved it.

George and Percy's deaths were hard, and everyone in her family has scars both visible and invisible as a result. But somehow this—this _helplessness_ , watching Ron waste away before her eyes—may be the hardest thing she's had to bear. She can't think of a time in her life when Ron hasn't been there for her, even as he called her a pest and tugged her braids or swatted at her to stop her trailing after him like the adoring baby sister she was. She's seen much worse spell damage in some of her patients, yet none of them has ever left her this frightened, this tremulous. No patient has ever mattered to her like this one, and she rubs her palms harder against her knees to prevent their shaking.

She speaks again, fighting to keep the tremor out of her voice, to make her tone as normal as possible. "I wish you could answer me. I wish I knew if you can even _hear_ me. I know Harry spends a lot of time in here talking to you." She pauses, and her jaw clenches. "I wonder, does he ever talk to you about Draco Malfoy? Because he spends a lot of time visiting with Malfoy too." Her fingers tap a quick, irregular rhythm on her knees. "I don't know what he does down there. I don't know what he's telling Malfoy, or what Malfoy is telling him, but it worries me how much Malfoy is thinking about Harry now, how often he asks about him. I don't know what kind of game Harry is playing, but I'm not sure he can win. I remember—I remember—" She frowns, her gaze unfocused. "Harry's never been very good at taking care of himself. Rescuing others, yes. But keeping himself out of harm's way? No." A short, wry laugh. "Certainly you know that, Ron."

She rises from the chair and paces to the window, where she rests her forehead against the glass and watches the evening darken outside. "Everyone's noticed how much time Harry spends here, and not all of it with you. It can't be good for the security of the case. It can't be good for anyone." She closes her eyes. "You should see the look on Malfoy's face when he talks about Harry. This can't end well. It can't." She opens her eyes again, staring at nothing. "I know enough not to expect happy endings anymore." She turns, slumping against the wall as she watches her brother with hollow eyes. "Some things I can't stop hoping for, though."

Ron's breathing is slow and shallow and regular, and he doesn't stir as Ginny settles herself into the chair next to the bed again, propping her elbows on the edge of the mattress and burying her face in her hands. "Merlin, Ron," she whispers into her palms, "why did it have to be you?" She rubs her fingers against her temples as she draws away with a sigh, and lets the room settle once again into quiet around them as the last light of evening fades outside the window.

The soft _pop_ s startle her out of her reverie, and she finds that two identical white envelopes have appeared on the bed, a name marked on each in neat, nondescript black ink. "Ginny," reads one, "Ron," the other, and Ginny's heart lurches to recognize Hermione's handwriting. She brushes a stubborn lock of ginger hair out of her eye and slides a finger under the flap of her own envelope to break the seal.

The letter is brief, but warm in tone, and when Ginny realizes Hermione's return is imminent, she sighs with a sense of relief she hadn't known she was still capable of feeling. Ginny was never truly a part of their inner circle, but even she has been able to sense the strange wrongness that is Harry, Ron, and Hermione separated. Harry might seem at times like the axis the forces of Light revolve around, but Ginny knows it is Ron and Hermione who keep him pointing at True North. Harry seems directionless without them.

She looks up from the letter to Ron's slumbering face and finds she can almost smile. "It's Hermione, Ron. She's coming home." There's no reaction; she wasn't really expecting one. But she finds herself somehow heartened all the same. "She wrote you a letter, too. Should I read it?" She laughs a little. As if there's any other option—either she'll read it to him, or one of the hospital staff tending Ron will when they find it here. She knows which one she would prefer, were she in Ron's stead.

She opens the flap and draws out the parchment, and she cannot feel envious to see that Ron's letter is significantly longer than her own.

 _Dear Ron_ , it begins, and Ginny wonders if it was a conscious choice on Hermione's part to employ an endearment—her own letter had begun with a familiar but no-nonsense _Ginny_.

Dear Ron,

I'm sure you understand that my writing to you when personal communication is so strictly controlled must have some extraordinary significance, but I won't keep you wondering long enough to devise some dire fate for me.

I'm coming home! Our mission is at a close, and we are returning to our home bases in stages. I can't predict when I will arrive; I only know that it's sooner than I'd dared hope. I love my work—certainly we've argued enough about it that you're well aware of that fact by now!—but it's hard, so hard, not to see my family and friends, because you are the people who give me strength. You know that. I hope you know that.

These last months have been some of the most difficult of my career, for reasons I can't go into on parchment, and I've had a lot of time to think about my life—what I've done and what I want to do and what it all means—and I've found myself reevaluating a hundred significant and seemingly insignificant things. One of the former is you.

Sometimes I feel as though we've been at cross-purposes all our lives—friends, certainly, but walking a wire hand-in-hand over a pit we don't understand and can't fathom the depth of, and the only reason we stay balanced is that we're applying opposing forces.

Ron, I want to shake that wire. There are things I want you to know—things I finally want to say to you—that I'm afraid might cause you to let go of my hand. But if we fall, we're going to do so together. The thought frightens me, I admit—but the Sorting Hat didn't put me in Gryffindor for nothing.

I don't know why I've bothered with this extended metaphor, and goodness knows I've probably managed to alarm you and make you wonder if I've joined a Muggle circus. But don't worry. I think this will be something good for both of us. I want to look into the future with hope, and I want some of that hope to center on you.

You mean the world to me, Ron. You know that, right? You and Harry both do. I've missed you more than I can ever hope to express in a letter like this. Soon, though, I'll be able to remedy that.

Love,  
Hermione




"Oh, Hermione," Ginny whispers, lowering the letter to her lap. Hermione's handwriting marches across the parchment in neat lines, so earnest. So unsuspecting.

She leans over and props the letter on the nightstand, then taps it with her wand and transfigures it into a small, plush ginger cat. No sense taking the chance of allowing the hospital staff to read something they've no business reading. 

When she stands to depart, it strikes her that the small approximation of Crookshanks appears almost to be standing guard over Ron. The idea is strangely comforting.

* * *

Tonks has never liked hospitals, an antipathy probably rooted in the number of visits she endured to St. Mungo's as a child, before her mother finally took a certification course in medical magic, thinking it a better investment than the galleons they'd been pouring into the Healers' pockets. After every incident, her father would grit his teeth and smile through his concern and say, "She's young and coltish. She'll grow out of it. She just has to get used to herself." Her dad was a smart man, and he was usually right about things. But when you could change your body with a thought, did you ever truly "get used" to yourself?

She strolls through the hospital, into the Obscure Maladies ward, and narrowly avoids walking into a cart stacked with bedpans when she catches herself craning her neck to peer into each room she passes. Ginny isn't on duty this morning, she remembers, so there's no point looking. They've seen each other when their schedules permit, which isn't terribly often, but something inside of Tonks knots pleasantly just thinking about her—not only her beauty, her touch, her affection, but the almost apologetic way she smiles, the delicate pallor of her skin, too often trapped indoors, the way her eyes go glassy with suppressed pain when she thinks Tonks isn't looking. Tonks thinks sometimes about whisking Ginny away for a week or two, maybe to the South of France, where they could soak up sun on nude beaches—Tonks has always wanted to try that—and get away from this madness for a while. But she knows it's just a fantasy—the entire Continent is as much under assault as Britain, and, besides, neither she nor Ginny is in any position to turn her back on her responsibilities at this juncture.

Someday, she thinks, and smiles at the thought of Ginny's long limbs, milk white and dusted with freckles, spread against the glittering sand. _Someday._

She pauses in front of the door at the end of the hallway, feeling the magic of the barricade prickle along her skin. She wasn't supposed to have this duty today, but there was some shuffling of the Auror teams this morning after Moody's announcement that Harry is on leave. She's still a little puzzled and hurt that Harry never mentioned anything about it to her. They'd been partners for over a year, and—she'd thought—friends for longer. He'd even hit on her once on a very drunken night just after he'd been released from hospital following the Malfoy raid. She might have been flattered if Harry hadn't been so clearly pissed and grieving and not himself. She'd led him home, her arm slung around his shoulders for support, thinking all the while what an absurd picture they made—Harry was far, far drunker than she, but only about equally clumsy. By the time she'd settled him into bed, he'd been despondently muttering, "Why did he do it? Why did he do it?"

She'd smoothed the hair off his brow like her mother had done when Tonks was sick as a child. "Ron will be OK, Harry. He has to be."

He'd looked at her then, eyes bright and strangely lucid. "Ron? What _about_ Ron?"

She's still considering that as she steps through the doorway into Draco Malfoy's hospital room.

Although they're first cousins, she had very little contact with Draco as they were growing up, her mum's estrangement from her family being what it was. The raid at Malfoy Manor was the first time she'd seen him in person in nearly a decade, and the last time she'd met him before that had been a chance encounter outside of Flourish & Blotts when he'd been about sixteen, his dismissive sneer making his resemblance to his father eerie. Tonks had smiled and introduced herself, a small, clumsy, Gryffindorish—and, she soon realized, pointless—attempt to begin to bridge the rift between their families. 

His voice had been cold as he'd looked at her like a piece of rubbish stuck to his expensive shoe. "Mudblood-loving scum like you," he said, slowly and clearly, "are the reason my father is in Azkaban right now." She gasped, and might have spoken, but he turned and grasped the arm of a tall, icily blonde woman she recognized as her Aunt Narcissa. It was Narcissa's face that halted her words. She looked broken, shattered—like her sanity had been cobbled together with Spellotape, and a botch-up job of it at that. Tonks took a step back and promptly fell over a stack of books piled behind her, knocking her head on the pavement and landing with her feet stuck in the air. By the time she'd righted herself and shaken loose from the concerned bystanders, the Malfoys had disappeared. It was the last time she'd seen her aunt alive.

Her first look at the man in the hospital bed makes her pause. She remembers him as a boy, small and bright-eyed and full of deviltry. She remembers the lean, sharp-featured teenager with a haunted shadow to his cold eyes. She remembers seeing him from a distance, a lithe, powerful figure bathed in the glow of the setting sun, just before all hell broke loose at Malfoy Manor. But she doesn't remember him ever looking so pale, so thin, so jagged.

He glances up from the _Prophet_ with a bored air. "Another Auror," he sneers. "Pardon me if I don't jump for joy." He turns away, but she can see that the fingers that hold the newspaper are tense. She doesn't imagine all this interrogation has been pleasant for him, and having undergone the requisite Veritaserum questioning during Auror training, she has some inkling of what he's been subjected to week after week.

At this moment, a harried-looking Healer steps through the door, fishing in the pocket of his robes. "Miss Tonks?" he says distractedly, drawing out a small bottle that makes Draco tense more visibly, though his face is blank. At her "Wotcher," the Healer continues. "I was told you'd arrived. Shall we commence?" He draws out the dropper.

Tonks finds herself speaking almost before she's thought. "Actually, I think we'll take a pass on the Veritaserum today."

Both the Healer and Draco stare at her in open astonishment. "But—but—" the Healer stammers. When she only glares at him challengingly, he protests, "This is highly irregular!"

"I know, and I don't care. If you Healers can't tell by now whether this boy is ill or not without resorting to Veritaserum, you'd be better off getting more training than relying on truth potions to make up for your shortcomings." She steps to the door and holds it open, gesturing for him to go. "Thank you for your time, though."

He gives her a sharp look as he takes his leave, and she feels a small, unholy spurt of glee as she closes the door behind him with a flourish. When she turns back to Draco, he is staring at her with unconcealed awe. "You're either mad or stupid. Or both."

She shrugs. "Maybe I just don't give a damn anymore." She quirks a fuchsia eyebrow at him. "Not that you'd know anything about that, now, would you?"

He doesn't betray a reaction with so much as a flicker of his eyelid, and she has to give him credit. "You'll get sacked," he says.

"Maybe."

"But why—"

"Look," she interrupts, dropping unceremoniously into the narrow, uncomfortable chair next to the bed, "you don't _like_ Veritaserum, do you?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head.

"Right. And I don't like using it unless I have to. So what's the problem?"

"Aren't you worried I'll lie to you?"

She shrugs again. "Maybe. Maybe not."

He stares at her, gaze filled with the sort of cautious curiosity more often seen in someone watching an exotic zoo animal. "You really _are_ mad." 

"If I am," she says, "it must run in the family." She lets him puzzle over that for a moment, then claps her hands. "Now! Let's get down to business, what?" When he meets her eyes, she thinks she can see just a hint of the wounded boy she'd once known lurking around the edges. It's enough to steady her confidence. "Draco," she says, and sees him take a sharp breath at being addressed in so familiar a manner. "What do you remember?"

He opens his mouth, closes it. He swallows, and the shadows in his eyes seem to shift back and forth. But when he looks at her, his gaze is direct, and his eyes are clear. "So little," he says, his fist curling in the bedcovers. "So damned little."

She wants to lean over and touch him, press her palm against that clenched hand, run her fingers through that fine hair, hug him, even—all the liberties she was never allowed as the common, distasteful cousin with the tainted blood. She doesn't think he'd appreciate such gestures any more today than he would have as a child, but somehow she suspects he needs them more now.

"What's the first thing you remember?" she asks gently.

He frowns and rubs briefly at his temple, as if he has a headache. "It's hard to tell," he admits. "I've had so many strange dreams, I don't know anymore what I'm really remembering and what's just _appeared_ in my head thanks to Potter and that bloody photo album and the newspaper and my own twisted mind."

She files away the reference to the photo album for future examination. "Tell me about the dreams, then. What do you see?"

"Different things. Sometimes I'm in school, at this Hogwarts place I've seen in photographs."

"Do you just recognize it from photos?"

"No, not exactly. When I'm in the dreams, I somehow _know_ I'm at Hogwarts, even if it's a classroom or a place on the grounds I've never seen in photographs."

"Do you recognize any people?"

"I—" He hesitates. "Well, there's—Potter." He continues in a rush. "But I see him all the time, so it's only natural that I—"

"Who else do you recognize?" she interrupts, wondering just how often Harry has been visiting here, and what, exactly, is provoking Draco's defensiveness.

"Oh," he says, face falling just a little. "Well, there's that red-headed Healer, the tall bird—"

"Ginny?" she asks, then catches herself. "I mean, Healer Weasley."

"Weasel," he says, "right, that's the one. She hates me, you know."

"Who else?" she asks, not taking the bait.

He appears disappointed. "There are a couple of big goons who seem to be my bodyguards, or some such." He looks at her expectantly, and with a wave of her blue-tipped fingers, she gestures at him to go on. "Some teachers. A huge, hairy idiot of a man. A daft old fellow with a long, white beard. A skinny man with black hair." He frowns thoughtfully. "There's something about him—something important. He makes me feel—safe." He raises his eyes to meet hers again.

She keeps her face impassive, though her heart rate has increased. He _is_ remembering, she'd stake her life on it. "What other sorts of things do you remember from these dreams?"

"About school, you mean?"

"Anything. Anything at all."

"Well," his fingers pluck at the loose cotton of his pajama bottoms. "I remember—that is, I think I remember—my father."

"Tell me about him?"

He takes a slow breath. "He's tall. Very blond, very sophisticated. He's proud of me, he says so. He—" Draco stops and looks at her sharply. "What happened to him? I don't know what happened to him."

Her breath catches at the abrupt question. "I—can't tell you that."

"Is he dead?"

"I can't tell you that." They stare at each other for a moment. "I'm sorry," she says, and perhaps he realizes she means it, because he just nods and looks away.

"He seems like he's—was—is a very important man."

"What does he do or say in these dreams?"

"He's—" He frowns in thought. "He always seems to be talking about choices—about how I need to make the right choices, how he's sure I _will_ make the right choices. And I know—or I sense, in the dream, I think I know exactly what he's referring to—I know what decision he wants me to make."

Blood is pounding in her ears. "What decision is he talking about?"

He shakes his head, looking frustrated. "I don't know. In the dream, I know that I know, but when I wake up, I don't remember what I thought I knew." He frowns. "Does that make any sense?"

"Yes." She sighs. "How do you feel in these dreams—what are you thinking?"

"I feel—excited. Awed. Impatient. Like I can't wait to follow his lead and prove my worth to him." He clenches his fist. "I hope I did. I hope I lived up to everything he expected of me."

Her breath catches, and she can't look at him—his fierce pride and fiercer hope. There's a burning sensation at the back of her eyes that she fears might be tears. She clears her throat. "What else do you remember from the dreams?"

He's silent for a moment, and she thinks he isn't going to answer. Then he says, haltingly, "I—this probably sounds strange—I'm probably just making it up—some sort of nightmare—" When he meets her eyes, she can read the confusion in his expression.

"Tell me about it," she says.

He takes a breath. "There's—a man. But not a man. I'm not sure what he is."

Her breathing speeds up.

"He's tall and—" He shudders. "—horrible. A face like a snake, not a man, with long, cold fingers and eyes that seem to look right through you, as if he can see into your mind."

"What does he—do?" she manages.

"He addresses me by name, and I kneel before him and drink from a chalice—he says something about—a girl?" He frowns, trying to concentrate. "It's terrible—thick and warm—and he touches me, and there's pain, so much pain." He doesn't seem aware that he is rubbing his left arm, right where she knows the Dark Mark to be, and she feels sick.

"How do you feel about him in the dream?"

"Like—" He closes his eyes, as if searching for the right word. "Like he's the answer to every question I've ever had. Like I would follow him to the ends of the earth." He opens his eyes and laughs a little, shakily. "I told you it was ridiculous."

She can't bring herself to smile back at him. "Is that all you remember of him?"

"Yes. Just that one dream. But I've had it more than once."

"It's always the same?"

"Yes. Down to the last detail."

"I see," she says. "What—"

"What does it mean?"

"I—what?" His question has caught her off guard, and she berates herself. An Auror should _never_ be off guard.

"What does it mean?" he demands again. "I have the same dream over and over—every horrible detail—and you sit there strung like a wire, so tense you could snap at any moment. It must mean _something_."

She's embarrassed to realize she's fisted one hand in her Auror's robes. Slowly, deliberately, she unclenches her fist and smoothes the material over her thigh. What's more mortifying, though, is how easily the questioning session has upset her balance. She's a seasoned Auror, with well over a decade of experience under her belt, and if she doesn't have balance in any other area of her life, certainly she has the mental acuity to stay on her toes while questioning a prisoner she's known since he was a child. "I can't answer your questions," she says, willing him to understand.

He grits his teeth and turns away. "No one can ever answer my bloody questions," he mutters.

She sighs and shifts in the uncomfortable chair, crossing her legs, then uncrossing them, then sitting up straighter. "Look, it's not that we don't _want_ you to know anything. It's just that any outside information you receive about your past could taint the memory recovery process."

He looks thoughtful. "Is that why the copy of the _Prophet_ they bring me sometimes has sections missing?"

"That's probably part of it."

He frowns. "Then what about Potter?"

Her eyebrows draw together in confusion. "What _about_ Potter?"

"If I'm not supposed to be learning about my past, then why is he allowed in here, showing me his photo album and talking about our schooldays?"

"He what?" she blurts before she can stop herself, then slams her mouth shut.

But he's already smirking. "Didn't know about that, did you?"

She wants to kick herself, but she knows it's already too late. "Have you told anyone else?"

"One of the Aurors, I think." He shrugs. "Old chap. Ugly. Had a strange eye."

 _Moody_ , she thinks. _Moody knows?_ She's silent for a moment, thinking, then deliberately clears her face of all expression and turns back to Draco. "Is there anyone else you remember from those dreams?"

He scowls. "Don't you want to talk about Potter?"

She raises an eyebrow at his tone. "Clearly not as much as you do."

He closes his mouth, and she can see color rise in his cheeks. Whether it's anger or something else, she's not sure.

"What else do you remember, Draco?" she asks after a few moments have passed.

He's silent a little longer, and she begins to wonder whether she is going to have to find the Healer with the Veritaserum, then slowly, grudgingly, he says, "There's a woman. I've seen her maybe once or twice. I think she's a relative of some sort."

Tonks takes a slow breath at the memory of her Aunt Narcissa. "Can you remember what sort of relation?"

"Not immediate family, I don't think. Maybe—a cousin?"

He gaze sharpens at that, and she hopes he doesn't—no, he can't. Can he? Surely she hadn't made that much of an impression on him in their few brief meetings. "What does she look like?" she asks, aware that this question might not be much help.

"She's tall. Blonde. Thin."

Tonks blinks. "Are you sure she's your cousin?"

He gives her a sardonic look. "Am I sure of bloody anything?"

She snorts. "Point."

"She's—" he continues, then frowns a little. "I'm not sure she's exactly what she appears to be."

Tonks's breath catches. Could it be—? "What do you remember about her?"

He shrugs, not seeming aware of her tension. "Not much. I've only dreamt about her a couple of times, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's as if—I'm helping her with something, but I'm not."

"Helping her with what?"

He shrugs again. "Research of some sort, I think. I dream a lot about dusty old books and papers. Seems like mostly pretty useless stuff."

"Books and papers?"

He makes a dismissive gesture. "Old documents. Manuscripts. Things I can't read because they're so old or in other languages." He eyes her with suspicion. "How can this possibly be important?"

"Humor me," she says, her mind racing, but trying not to show it. "Do you remember what's on the papers?"

"Besides the languages I can't read?" he sneers.

She raises an eyebrow at him. "You can't read any of them?"

He stares back at her, then shifts his gaze away. "A few," he says.

"What do they say?"

Again, for a few moments, she thinks he isn't going to answer. Then, haltingly, he says, "Old spells. Curses." He shivers a little. "Dark things."

"Why were you reading old curses?"

"I don't know," he says, meeting her gaze again. "If I did know in the dreams, I've forgotten."

"Do you remember talking to this—cousin—of yours?"

"A little. She's—" He wrinkles his brow. "I don't remember what she says, only that there's a sense of urgency. She's anxious about something, and so am I."

"In the dreams, do you feel like you're in danger?"

"From her, you mean?"

"In any way."

He considers. "Nothing immediate, no. I have a feeling that she _could_ be a danger to me, but she isn't, not at that point. There's some kind of threat outside the walls, though. But I don't know what it is."

"Where are you in the dreams?"

"I don't know. A room with books and a fireplace. There are no windows, and I think—" He pauses. "I think the door is locked from the outside," he says slowly, as if just realizing it.

Her eyes widen involuntarily. "You're imprisoned?"

"I don't know," he says again, looking frustrated. "I can't tell what's happening—where I am, why I'm there. I think she's protecting me from something, but she's also threatening me somehow."

"She's the one making you read the old papers?"

"I think so, yes."

"And you don't remember anything at all about why you're doing this research?"

"No," he says. "I can't—" He stops abruptly, and his eyes widen. "Wait. No. That's—no."

"What?" she asks. He's silent, staring into space, and she presses again. "Draco, what? What do you remember?"

His breath is coming faster, and when he looks at her, there's a shadow of fear in his eyes. "Harry Potter," he says. "It has something to do with Harry Potter."

* * *

After the Auror leaves (ruffling his hair with one hand as she does so, in what has to be one of the strangest moments in Malfoy's admittedly limited recollection), there's none of the usual post-Veritaserum sickness, for which he is grateful, but there is a different kind of horror gnawing at his gut. Potter had told him before that he was a Death Eater, one of the enemies, and Aurors have asked him every week about dark memories and sinister plots. But never before— _never_ before—has he truly wondered whether he might be dangerous.

He lies back and closes his eyes, trying to recall the dream more clearly, but nothing more comes to him, just an odd certainty that, somehow, Harry Potter is the reason he's searching through those dark old volumes full of curses and horrors.

 _Harry Potter_ , he thinks angrily. _Fucking Harry Potter_. And that, unfortunately, brings another, rather different, image to mind, and he opens his eyes to the sun-bright room.

The warmth of late afternoon is enough to make him sleepy, even without the exhaustion of Veritaserum, and his eyes drift shut again. He relaxes into the bed, letting himself become aware of the warm kiss of sun painting bars across his supine body, a prison of light. He exhales deeply and lets his mind wander, unsurprised when it drifts inexorably back to a skinny, bespectacled Auror with poison green eyes.

He has memories of Potter that he's not sure are memories, but he can't deny these thoughts, whatever they might be, that have overtaken him of late—Potter, long and lean and pale, rising to Malfoy's touch, open for him, begging, moaning as Malfoy covers him.

Malfoy sucks in a breath, eyes still closed as his hand snakes beneath the waist of his trousers and takes hold, stroking hard. He knows it's mid-day, knows the hospital staff could walk in at any moment, knows he ought to be ashamed of these recurrent thoughts—or at least terrified that someone will discover them—but right now, he honestly doesn't give a damn.

When he comes, it is with a low, strangled sound.

He lies on the bed, panting, and opens his eyes, relishing the white shock of pain when the sunlight strikes his dilated pupils. As his breathing evens out, he thanks whatever gods there might be that no one is here to see, or overhear, or determine the name he caught behind his lips in the moment before giving voice to it would make it irrevocable.

Uncaring of the mess, he strips off his shirt to swipe against the wetness on his abdomen and his palm, then balls it up and drops it on the floor. He curls on his side with his eyes closed, but doesn't sleep.


	9. Yesterdays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 originally posted September 2, 2004.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised, Bow, and Supergrover24.

_To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day  
To the last syllable of recorded time,  
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!  
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player  
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage  
And then is heard no more: it is a tale  
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
Signifying nothing._  
—William Shakespeare, _Macbeth_ (V.v.19-28)

 

"Draco Malfoy is starting to remember."

Moody greets Tonks's opening remark without a change in expression. For such a blustery, twitchy man, it's unnerving how still he can be when it suits him. He leans forward and drums his fingers against the desktop. "This is your professional opinion?"

"Absolutely," she says.

"Absolutely?" he echoes. "You're that positive?"

Even after over a decade as an Auror, sometimes Tonks still forgets not to use casual absolutes and superlatives in her reports to superiors. "I'm very confident, sir," she replies. "When I questioned him, he knew things he hadn't known during previous interrogations. His memory still has plenty of holes in it, but he's getting there, I'm sure of it."

"If he's beginning to remember who he is, then why have we seen no sign of it before this? Why hasn't his behavior changed?"

"I don't think he realizes how much he's remembering. It's coming to him in dreams, and he's not sure whether they're memories or nonsense."

"How can you be sure they aren't nonsense?"

"Like I said, he knows things he shouldn't know—he described Hagrid and Dumbledore and Snape, and there's obviously no way he could have met any of them in recent weeks. There hasn't even been anything about them in the _Prophet_ recently. And surely," she adds, watching Moody for a reaction, "nobody's been telling him anything he shouldn't know."

But he doesn't betray his knowledge by so much as the flicker of an eyelid. "Did he remember their deaths?"

"I—no, I don't think so."

"You don't think so?"

"He only talked about them at Hogwarts."

"Did you ask anything to make him indicate whether he knew they were dead?"

She purses her lips. "No, sir, I didn't. I was more focused on figuring out how much he remembers in general, rather than how closely he remembers it."

"Never overlook details, Tonks. You know how important your role is in this war."

"I know, sir."

"It can never be overestimated."

"Yes, sir, I _know_."

He pauses and watches her with a hint of amusement—or at least as close to amusement as Moody gets. "Irritated, are we?"

She squirms a little. "Maybe, sir."

He runs a thumb thoughtfully over one of the deeply ridged scars in his cheek. "What else did Malfoy have to say?"

She shifts in the uncomfortable wooden chair. "I think he remembers his Death Eater initiation."

"He spoke of Voldemort?" Both of Moody's eyes are fixed on her, and she thinks she sees a gleam of triumph lurking in their depths.

"I think so," she says. "He didn't refer to him by name, but the description seemed to fit."

"How did Malfoy describe him?"

"Snakelike and inhuman."

"Sounds like our boy, all right. How did he describe the ceremony—did he know what it was?"

"No, I don't think he did—he remembered drinking something from a chalice and being touched, and he rubbed at his Dark Mark when he said it."

"Ah, interesting. Did he seem distressed?"

She frowns. "I wouldn't say 'distressed.' He didn't look happy about the memory, but he also seemed to be in awe of Voldemort."

"Now, you mean, or in the memory?"

"In the memory, definitely. Now—I'm not sure."

"You don't think he was playacting with you?"

She blinks, acutely aware that she hasn't mentioned the lack of Veritaserum. "Sir?"

He watches her impassively. "I received the most interesting owl from Healer Ralston a few hours ago."

She slumps down in her seat, all the breath expelled from her lungs in one gust. "Oh."

"'Oh,' indeed, Tonks." He draws out a slip of parchment and glances over it before looking up at her again. "He claims you all but pushed him out the door when he attempted to administer Veritaserum."

She swallows. "That's true, sir."

"Why did you do that?"

She sighs and cracks her knuckles nervously before realizing what she's done, then sits on her hands to stop their fidgeting. "Well, Draco—I mean, Malfoy—he seemed so angry, and so scared. I just—I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"You 'couldn't bring yourself' to adhere to Ministry regulations regarding the questioning of a prisoner suspected of multiple murders and collusion with the Dark Lord himself?"

She closes her eyes. "I know it sounds terrible."

"There's a reason we have established procedures in place."

His tone is unnervingly mild, and she squeezes open one eye to look at him. When he doesn't appear purple-faced or otherwise immediately likely to sack her, she opens both eyes and places her hands in her lap, where she twists her fingers nervously. "It's just—you see, I reviewed the transcripts this morning, before I went to the hospital, and we've not been getting much information out of him, at least not much that we can use."

Moody takes a sip from his flask. "Go on."

"Well," she says, twisting her fingers harder, "I wondered at first whether we just weren't asking the right questions. But then I got to Dra—Malfoy's room, and he was so tense, so resentful, I began to wonder if maybe he'd been resisting our methods." She looks at him imploringly. "You know how clipped his responses were in all the other questioning sessions. He doesn't give any more than exactly what we've asked for, and sometimes barely that."

He watches her with an inscrutable expression, but doesn't interrupt.

"I—I remembered what it was like to be under the influence of Veritaserum, how humiliating it is, how dehumanizing, almost, and I just—couldn't do it. I thought—" Her gaze slides away, and she hunches further in her chair, her voice trailing nearly to a whisper. "I thought, maybe he needed to be trusted for once."

"So you decided to trust a known Death Eater held in Ministry containment, who may or may not be recovering memories that may or may not involve murders or attempted murders of innocent witches and wizards, including some of your own colleagues?"

Her voice is very, very small. "Yes."

"Did it work?"

She blinks. "Sir?"

"You heard me, girl. Did—it— _work_?"

"I—" She sits up and shakes her head, a little dazed. "I think so. I think it did."

He straightens his posture with a _hmph_. "I'll be the judge of that," he says. "The recording charms will be ready for review as soon as you go."

She only stares at him, blinking stupidly.

"Well, get a move on, then," he orders, and she can hear his wooden leg thump the floor under the desk for emphasis. "Can't get any work done while you're sitting there watching me like some sort of bloody owl."

"Does this mean—you're not sacking me?" she ventures meekly.

"Not at the moment, although the fact that you're still sitting here is making me reconsider!"

She flies out of the chair so quickly she manages to both knock it over and trip over it, sending her sprawling across the hard floor. She jumps to her feet, brushing off her knees as she retreats. "Thank you, sir," she gasps.

"Tonks!" he barks, and she freezes, one hand on the doorjamb, then turns to face him again. He eyes her as she tries not to show the nerves that are still making her gut twist. "I've never been one to spurn unconventional methods," he says, and her eyes widen. "But," he growls, "don't go making a habit of it. You could have jeopardized an entire investigation!" She nods fervently, and he waves a hand at her. "Go!"

She goes.

* * *

It's just after sunset when Harry strolls through the hospital doors, easing inconspicuously (he hopes) down the hall. He'd been tempted to wear his Invisibility Cloak, but the hospital's protective spells would recognize him through it, and then there would be questions about why he'd tried to conceal himself. He's here to visit Ron, of course, and he will—in a little while.

The knowledge that he was scheduled to interview Draco Malfoy today has been buzzing at Harry all day. It's something he hadn't allowed himself to fixate before today. The assignment came down only a few days ago, and it had caused a leap of excitement that unnerved him a little. He's questioned countless Death Eaters and allies under Veritaserum—he shouldn't have felt so eager, and the knowledge almost shamed him.

Since he was stripped of his Auror duties, however, it hasn't been an issue.

The thought lurked in the back of his head all day long—to whom had the assignment fallen? Had Moody done it himself—and if so, what did he ask?

He'd found himself unable to concentrate on conversation with Mrs. Weasley when he tried visiting the Burrow that afternoon, and ended up scratching nonsense into parchment while his mind wandered over a letter to Neville. When he caught himself and looked down at the name his quill had scrawled over and over, he incinerated the parchment with a slash of his wand. He tried to spend the afternoon reading new reports about Voldemort's suspected whereabouts (which had arrived in plain wrapping via a non-Ministry owl), but more often than not, he wound up staring at the same sentence for minutes at a time, unable to absorb anything.

He pauses now in the corridor outside Malfoy's private room. The security spells surrounding the hospital permitted him entrance, but that might have been due to his relationship with Ron. His gut clenches at the realization that the door to Malfoy's room might not be similarly passable. Taking a breath, he steps through the barrier and feels the magic wash over him, prepared to be forcibly ejected if the spells have been reset.

But he feels only a familiar tingle, and then he is through.

He pushes open the door to Malfoy's room to find the bedside illumination lit against the evening dimness, and Malfoy curled on his side in the bed, his back turned to Harry. It takes Harry a moment to register that the back is naked—white and narrow, vertebrae tracing a ladder down his spine from nape to pajama-clad hips. He swallows.

"I've already told you," comes a muffled voice from the bed. "I'm fine, damn it. I'm not ill, and I don't want your bloody potions or your bloody food."

Harry clears his throat, but even so, his voice is gravelly when it emerges. "I think you could probably use the food."

Malfoy's shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly, then slowly he rolls so that he is facing Harry, torso propped up on one sharp elbow. The light traces his form, skin pale, chest thin and nearly hairless. Harry averts his eyes, refusing to allow himself to stare at the pink nipples or the sharp hipbone that angles just above the waist of Malfoy's pajama bottoms, and instead attempts to remind himself of the significance of the dark, ugly scar that mars the left side of Malfoy's chest. "What are you doing here?" Malfoy sneers, and it's a few seconds before Harry realizes that Malfoy has spoken. 

"I was…at the hospital anyway," he says, voice trailing off at Malfoy's laughter.

"Pull the other one, Potter," Malfoy says, shifting so that he lies on his back, arching upward briefly to adjust the bedclothes settled around him.

Harry's throat goes dry at the flex of muscle and the play of light and shadow along the other man's ribs. He walks to the chair next to Malfoy's bed, trying not to move too quickly, and settles down, bunching his robes in his lap in what he hopes is an inconspicuous manner. The way Malfoy smirks at him when he turns his head and stretches makes Harry realize his efforts have been futile. "Couldn't stay away, could you?" Malfoy murmurs, eyes fixed on Harry's right hand, which is clenching and unclenching in the material bunched in his lap.

Offended by the look of appraisal, Harry sits up straighter and draws one ankle up on his opposite knee. Malfoy's amused gaze flicks to his and Harry narrows his eyes. "My, we're feeling chipper tonight, aren't we?"

Malfoy laughs, a small, bitter sound, and rests his head back against the pillow again. "Auror visits always leave me filled with such joie de vivre."

Harry scowls. "If you'd prefer that I leave—"

"No!" Malfoy sits up, then seems abashed to have spoken so quickly and so forcefully. Now it is Harry's turn to be amused. "No," Malfoy says again, not meeting Harry's eyes. "It's not like I get a lot of company," he says, jerking one shoulder in a small shrug, "even it if _is_ another bloody Auror."

Harry fidgets with the fabric in his lap, and he doesn't meet Malfoy's eyes.

"You know," Malfoy says, settling comfortably against the headboard, "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you out of uniform. I figured you Aurors were on duty 24 hours a day—after all, you're in uniform even when you come here to watch me sleep at night." Harry gives him a warning look, but Malfoy ignores the hint. "My, my, Potter, are we shirking our duties?" He laughs. "The Light will never win with that attitude."

"I am not shirking my duties," Harry says through clenched teeth.

"Do your superiors know you've doffed their precious Auror wear?" Malfoy continues relentlessly. "Did the emblem not do enough to bring out the color of your eyes?"

This sends Malfoy into peals of laughter that make Harry ball his fists in anger. Before he even realizes it, he is shouting. "I was suspended, you stupid git!"

Malfoy's laughter comes to a dead halt, and he looks at Harry with a mixture of surprise and almost embarrassment. "Suspended? Why would you be suspended?"

"Because of you," Harry spits, and Malfoy flinches. The room falls silent, and Harry allows his breathing to slow, realizing that Malfoy is no longer looking at him. He feels an irrational stab of regret. "I don't mean that," he says quietly. "It's not your fault. It's mine."

Malfoy's gaze rises to meet his again, and his eyes are scornful. "Why not?" He laughs, bitterly. "Everything that's gone wrong is my fault, isn't it? Your sick friend, your suspension." He snorts. "Probably even your complete lack of a sex life."

"How did—" Harry snaps his mouth shut and blushes, mortified as Malfoy laughs—real laughter this time.

"Lucky guess," Malfoy says, watching him almost fondly.

Harry frowns into his lap.

"So," Malfoy says, voice almost too casual, "are your fellow Aurors concerned that you've behaved inappropriately toward me?"

"In a manner of speaking," Harry mutters.

Malfoy chuckles, then stops when Harry glares at him. "You're not serious?"

Harry shrugs.

"Do they think we're carrying on a torrid affair behind the hospital's walls?" he asks incredulously.

"No," Harry says, not looking at him. "But they have cause to believe we might."

Harry falls silent, and the room is quiet but for Malfoy's harsh breathing until Malfoy explodes, "For Merlin's sake, Potter! You do _not_ make a statement like that, then fail to explain yourself."

Harry closes his eyes and tilts his head back against the edge of the uncomfortable chair, sensing Malfoy's glare on him. All he feels is tired, so incredibly tired. "All right, Malfoy," he says, resigned. "Let me tell you a story."

He listens to the quiet for a moment before he continues, his eyes still closed to prevent himself having to meet Malfoy's. "Once," he says, "a long, long time ago, there were two boys who went to Hogwarts. They were in the same year, but different Houses, and their rivalry was about as intense as any schoolboy rivalry can be. Rivals in class, rivals on the Quidditch pitch—and they were sure to end up on opposite sides of the war breaking out all around them.

"One of the boys had suffered nightmares for years, and by their final year at school he rose before dawn every morning and walked down to the lake in the dark, staying to watch the sunrise. Then one day, the other boy appeared there as well."

"What was he doing there?" Malfoy interrupts.

"He was—" Harry begins, then frowns. "He never explained."

"Was he having nightmares too?"

"It's not important."

"How do you know?"

At this Harry opens his eyes and glares at Malfoy. "Because it's my bloody story, all right?"

Malfoy's lip juts out in what could almost be called a sulk, but he doesn't speak.

"As I was saying," Harry continues, closing his eyes again, "the two boys met at the lake one morning, and they exchanged words, but somehow each of them managed to make it through the sunrise without killing the other. The next day, both boys were there again. And the next day. And the next. Soon it was routine."

"They just watched the sunrise together?" Malfoy asks skeptically.

"Well, they talked a little."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"No skinny dipping, no wanking contests—"

Harry blinks at him, startled. "No."

Malfoy scowls and slumps further against the headboard. "This story is boring."

"I'm sorry," Harry retorts. "Next time I'll be sure to bring my collection of pornography."

Malfoy mutters something unintelligible, but Harry ignores him and continues, now watching Malfoy with an annoyed expression. "The boys found themselves almost—looking forward to seeing each other, though they never explicitly said so. Then one day—one of them didn't show up."

"Did he stand him up?"

"No, he overslept. But the other boy was angry—maybe even hurt—though he tried to hide it. The boy who'd overslept caught his classmate in the Potions storeroom and apologized, but it was no use. He promised he would be there tomorrow, and the other boy just laughed and said it was pointless to make a promise like that, because there might not even be a tomorrow."

Malfoy is watching him now, expression strangely intent, and Harry finds he can't look away. "What did he do?" Malfoy asks quietly.

"He repeated his promise. And then he fulfilled it. Over and over, every day, he promised, and every morning, he fulfilled that promise, maybe thinking the other boy would learn to trust him, to learn there were things he could rely on."

"What happened?"

Harry's mouth twists in a frown. "He never believed. He never trusted."

"So they just kept on being rivals?"

"Yes," Harry says, gaze distant. "They were rivals in every single, superficial way. Yet they continued to meet every morning."

"Why?"

Harry turns to him, blinks. "What?"

"Why would they keep meeting if they didn't like each other?"

Harry plucks at the fabric of his robes. "It's not so much that they _didn't_ like each other, as that they weren't supposed to like each other. They weren't permitted to. But they each found a strange sort of—comfort—in the presence of the other, even as the war began to rage all around them."

"Peace," Malfoy murmurs, and Harry, caught off guard, stares for a moment.

"Yes," he says. "Peace. Of a sort."

"So," Malfoy leans back and draws one knee up, and Harry averts his eyes from the creases in his abdomen, the way the pajama bottoms have slid slightly farther down on his lean hips. "Did anything else ever happen? They just got up early and sat together, and hated each other otherwise?"

"They didn't hate each other," he says, then stops and reassesses. "I don't think they hated each other. I—maybe there was more hatred on one side than on the other."

Malfoy's face goes blank, and Harry grimaces a little to remember the times he's impressed his hatred of Malfoy on him, reminded him in word and deed of just how much he holds the man in contempt for things Malfoy can't even remember. He will not allow himself to regret that; he will not.

Malfoy frowns and crosses his arms across his too-thin chest. "Well, that was a brilliant story, Potter, but I'm not sure I see the point."

"That's because it isn't finished, you git."

"More scintillating lake-watching? My nerves can hardly stand it."

"They kept meeting every morning, and not much changed except that they spoke a little more, touched a little more. But they never said anything truly important, and they never touched in any way that mattered."

"By 'touched,' you mean—"

"Hands touching in corridors, bodies brushing against each other in crowded spaces. Small things."

"Oh," Malfoy says. "Nothing—sexual?"

"No."

"Hmm," Malfoy replies, but doesn't say anything more.

"Finally, it was their last night at Hogwarts, and somehow the two of them ended up at the lake together one last time, watching the sunset. The next morning they would board the train back to London, and everyone would be off to join the war—one side or the other."

"And they were on opposing sides."

"Yes," Harry says. "But one of them thought—well, thought maybe he could change that, thought the other didn't really want to be on that side, that he was only doing what was expected of him. He tried to persuade him to change sides."

"Was he successful?"

"No. They argued, shouted at each other, made threats—or promises that were as good as threats. And—they parted."

Malfoy sits up. "That's _it_?"

Harry shrugs. "That's it."

Malfoy narrows his eyes. "No, it's not. There's something you're not telling me, I'm sure of it. I don't trust you, Potter."

Harry narrows his own eyes. "You never did, Malfoy."

Malfoy glares at him for another moment, then his face falls slack with astonishment. "Bloody hell, you kissed me."

Harry's breath leaves him in a rush. "What?"

"I remember," Malfoy says slowly. "Arguing on the lake shore, in the sunset. I dreamed about it." His eyes are wide, accusatory, when he looks at Harry. "You kissed me."

"I did not!" Harry cries, rising to his feet.

"Then why did I dream about it?"

"Maybe because you _wish_ it had happened?" he snaps, and they stare at each other, each breathing hard.

"I don't trust you," Malfoy says again, more slowly this time, eyes intent on Harry's. "Clearly I've given you the benefit of the doubt to a much greater degree than I should have, given my suspicions about your motivations. I know you're lying to me somehow, and I know you left a lot out of that riveting little story of yours. I didn't even think at first that it was about you and me. 'This can't be it,' I thought. 'This can't be my great secret history with Potter, the thing Potter dances around, the thing that makes him nervous when he so much as talks to me.'" His voice rises in volume with every word. "Sunrises and stupid boys! Yeah, that's a terrific story, Potter, and I guess it just shows how little things have changed—you couldn't bring yourself to trust me then, and you still can't now!"

"Wait a minute," Harry interrupts. "You think _I'm_ the one with the trust problem? _I'm_ the one who didn't believe? You arrogant bastard!"

"Oh, and I'm supposed to believe that all those years ago, when you yourself said we were on opposite sides of a war, you just handed me your trust, no questions, no stipulations, no reservations? That I didn't need to prove myself to you, or demonstrate to you over and over that my word was good? How stupid do you think I am, Potter?"

"Clearly no more stupid than I was to have trusted you back then!" Harry shouts. "I all but handed you my heart on a silver platter, and you betrayed—"

" _What_?" Malfoy yells, and Harry stops, realizing suddenly what he's just said. They stare at each other in silence, then Malfoy clenches his eyes shut with a grimace. "Get out," he says, voice low.

Harry blinks. "What?"

Malfoy's eyes snap open, and the rage in them roots Harry to the spot. "Get out!" Malfoy roars, knuckles white against the bedcovers. "Get out, and take your filthy, manipulative lies with you!"

"They're not lies!" Harry shouts.

Malfoy laughs, and there's an edge of desperation to it. "I may not know a whole lot about who I am or who you are or who either of us was, but I can tell well enough exactly how you feel about me," he growls, "and I know you are _a bloody LIAR_!"

"What point would there be in lying to you?" Harry snarls.

"Maybe no reason," Malfoy says, rising from the bed, arrogant as ever in nothing but a pair of loose pajama bottoms that look in imminent danger of slipping from his hips. "Maybe just because you're a manipulative bastard who's trying to play me for a fool for mysterious reasons all his own."

Harry stands firmly in place, refusing to be intimidated by the too-short, half-starved Death Eater who's just invaded his personal space. The closeness evokes memories he immediately clamps down on. "You don't know anything," he says, meeting Malfoy's challenging gaze without faltering.

"I know enough," Malfoy says, taking one more step forward, so they are practically touching. Harry takes a sharp breath, and the slow smile that draws from Malfoy is almost feral. He raises his hands to press them against Harry's chest, and Harry is certain his heart has stopped. Then Malfoy's face twists in an expression of rage, and his muscles coil, and he _pushes_ —

But nothing happens.

"What?" he says, nonplussed, and Harry knocks Malfoy's arms away.

"There's a spell on you, remember?" he says, taking a step back and willing his breath to even out, kicking himself for thinking, even for one moment, that— _damn_ it. He turns his head and sees that Malfoy remains standing, eyes on the floor and fists clenched against his thighs in impotent rage. "You can't hurt anyone," Harry reminds him. "And nobody can hurt you."

Malfoy's eyes lift to meet his. "Get out," he says.

"Maybe I don't want to."

"What you _want_ ," Malfoy enunciates in a low, cold voice, "is immaterial."

"I can stay anywhere I please."

"You forget, you're not an Auror anymore."

The reminder stings, but Harry only smirks. "I assure you, that has nothing to do with it."

Malfoy's mouth twists in a sneer. "Well, aren't we the little princeling of the wizarding world?"

Harry laughs, a harsh bark. "That's rich, coming from you."

Malfoy takes a breath—slow, deep, controlled. "Get. Out. Of my room."

Harry pauses, as if to consider. "No," he says.

" _GET OUT!_ " Malfoy shouts, control finally breaking.

"You have no right to tell me to do anything!"

"I could say the same for you!"

Harry laughs. "But you'd be wrong."

With a frustrated snarl, Malfoy launches himself at Harry, only to find himself held back as though hitting an invisible wall. Malfoy pounds against the barrier with his fists while Harry laughs, and the door swings open to present a shocked Ginny Weasley. "What are you doing?" she shouts.

Instantly both of them stop, and in that sudden silence, Harry wonders at the picture they present—separated by maybe six inches of space, one in ordinary robes, laughing like a madman—he feels like one just now—the other sweat-slick, face reddened with exertion, pajamas a flimsy barrier—and which do little, he realizes now, to conceal Malfoy's startling half-erection. Harry feels himself coloring, and turns away. He can hear Malfoy's bare feet shuffling against the linoleum as he returns to bed, and when Harry looks again, the other man has drawn blankets against his lap and appears studiously unconcerned about any perceived state of undress or arousal.

Ginny pins the both of them with a glare. "Grown men, behaving like children," she says. "If I had wanted to deal with this kind of nonsense on the job, I'd be working in the pediatric wing at St. Mungo's." Harry takes a breath to protest, but Ginny raises a dismissive hand. "Are you here on duty?" she snaps.

"That's—" He stops in the face of her glare. "No," he admits.

"Then you shouldn't be here at all. Despite what you seem to think sometimes, this _is_ still a hospital, and Draco Malfoy is a patient in my care."

Malfoy gives her a sullen glare.

"And you!" she says, turning on him. "What are you doing, getting riled up like that?"

"You don't know what he says to me," Malfoy snarls.

"Perhaps I'm better off that way." She eyes him with a frown. "It's nearly time for you to go to sleep."

"I don't feel like sleeping," he says sullenly.

"I can very easily get somebody in here to administer a sleeping potion."

"I don't _need_ any _potions_."

"You haven't been sleeping soundly, Malfoy."

"That's my business, not yours."

"I am your Healer, therefore it very much _is_ my business. Now go to sleep." She pauses. "Where are the rest of your pajamas?"

He ignores her question and folds his arms across his chest. "Why does everyone think they can order me around?" he mutters.

"Because," she says, "in some cases, we _can_."

His gaze rises to meet hers, and they stare each other down for a few moments before his eyebrows lower. "Wait," he says slowly. "I remember you."

She blinks, and Harry takes a breath. "What do you mean, you remember me?"

"From before," he says, frowning. "I remember you." Something flickers behind his eyes and his expression turns dark. " _I remember you_."

She takes a step backward, then halts. Harry can see her back straighten, shoulders tighten. "You have no right to speak to me that way."

"I had only a vague memory of you before," he says, undeterred. "From the dreams. But, oh no, I remember you now, _Weasley_."

One of her hands curls into a fist. "Whatever you _think_ you may remember," she snaps, "you'd do better to remember what I've said."

"Then or now?" he sneers, and she tenses, then narrows her eyes.

"Both."

She grabs Harry by the front of his robes and drags him out the door in her wake. "What was that all about?" he asks when the door has shut behind them.

"Nothing," she says, giving him a stern look. "I meant what I said to you, too—you shouldn't be here. I don't care what kind of leniency they grant you at the Ministry. Stay away from him."

He draws himself up. "You don't have any authority over me."

"Oh, yeah?" she retorts, hands on her hips. "How fast do you think your access to this hospital would be restricted if I went to my father and warned that you were endangering the health of a high-security patient?"

He grits his teeth, but she only watches him expectantly. "Fine," he says, angrily. "I'll stay away."

"You'd better," she warns. "I don't know what's going on here, but he's making himself sick, and you already look like a ghost."

"So this is for my own good?" he mocks.

"Yes," she says. "It's time someone put her foot down."

He scowls and looks away. "When did you start channeling McGonagall?"

She sighs, a tired, lonely sound. "When I realized that suddenly _we're_ the authority figures here, and if we don't look out for each other, who will?"

He places a hand against her cheek as she closes her eyes and touches his wrist. Her skin is cool against his fingertips, like porcelain—fragile.

When she lifts her fingers, he drops his hand and walks away. He doesn't look back.

* * *

That night, Ginny Weasley lies awake with Tonks's arms around her, the rhythm of soft snores tickling her ear. _Stay away from him_ , her memory taunts. _Stay away from him._ When Tonks half-rouses and beings to nuzzle sleepy kisses against her neck, she closes her eyes. But sleep remains elusive.

In Field Hospital Number 7, Draco Malfoy sleeps fitfully, and his dreams are filled with the nightmarish face of Harry Potter.

Upstairs, Ron Weasley breathes in and breathes out, regular as the ticking of a clock, or the trickle of a mother's tears.

And halfway across the country, Harry Potter stands in the dark and hurls stones at the gates of Malfoy Manor. When light begins to creep along the horizon, he collapses to his knees and stares hollow-eyed at the dawn.


	10. Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10 originally posted November 16, 2004.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised, Bow, and Supergrover24.

_They name thee before me,  
   A knell to mine ear;  
A shudder comes o'er me—  
   Why wert thou so dear?_  
—George Gordon, Lord Byron

 

"Do you ever wonder whether you're really a good person?"

Tonks glances up from where her fingers have become tangled in the fastenings of her Auror's robes and blinks, surprised. "Should I?"

"No," Ginny says, lying on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling. The covers are bunched around her waist, and Tonks can't help but stare as Ginny's breasts shift with her movement. Not for the first time, she curses the Ministry owl that woke her this morning with its insistent tapping against the window, and wishes that the bloody owls weren't so smart as to be able to find her here all the time, instead of at her own flat. _Unscheduled morning meeting. Don't be late._ She'd be indignant if she weren't well aware that she needed the warning. Punctuality, like balance, has never been one of her strong points.

"Is something wrong?" she asks, one eye on her robes, one eye on Ginny, who rolls to her side, one arm propped under her head. Oh, cursed, _cursed_ morning meeting!

"No," Ginny says again with a sigh. "Nothing's wrong."

Tonks finally manages to line up the clasps in the proper order, wishing for the millionth time that wizards believed in using zippers in their uniforms, instead of dismissing them as a Muggle fashion statement. Satisfied with her efforts, she brushes her hands along the robes to set the folds in some semblance of order and turns to Ginny with a smile. "Do you need reassuring, love?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," Ginny replies, face pensive.

Tonks gives her hair—a subdued plum today—a cursory glance in the mirror before stepping across the room to take a seat at the edge of the bed, the depression causing Ginny to roll against her, which is a nice side benefit. "You are a good person," Tonks says, drawing one knee onto the bed and propping her hand against the mattress on the other side of Ginny's waist. Ginny's breasts are touching her leg, and Tonks is not ignorant of the fact, but it is with great strength of will that she doesn't do anything about it. "Does this have something to do with work?"

Ginny shakes her head and hooks an arm around Tonks's thigh, hugging it to her body. "No," she says. "It's nothing. Forget I said anything."

"No, no, it must be _something_ , or you wouldn't be so down this morning."

Ginny sighs again and curls more tightly around Tonks, pressing her cheek against Tonks's knee. "It's just—do you ever think about something you've done or said, and wondered if it was the right thing?"

"Sure," Tonks says. "I'm always putting my foot in my mouth."

"I don't mean that. I mean—when you thought it was the right thing to do at the time, but now you're not sure."

Tonks combs her hand through Ginny's sleep-rumpled hair, feeling the burnished strands shift through her fingers like cool fire. "I think everyone has times like that," she says, hand moving in slow strokes. Ginny's eyes close. "Does this have anything to do with Harry?"

She feels Ginny tense against her, then a slow, deliberate easing of her muscles. "Doesn't everything?" Ginny murmurs.

Tonks slides her hand through Ginny's hair, waiting for her to speak further. When nothing more is forthcoming, she pauses and leans forward to find that Ginny has fallen asleep, clinging to her. She continues the slow, gentle strokes, watching the not-quite-relaxation of Ginny's features—the mouth slightly open, eyes closed too tightly for peaceful sleep. Ginny's breaths against her are deep and even.

She is only a little late to her morning meeting.

* * *

Malfoy braces his hands against the windowsill and leans forward, the glass cool and damp with morning condensation against his forehead as he stares unseeing at the world on the other side. Images flicker through his mind, and he closes his eyes, as if against them.

He is almost certain now that his memory is returning—creeping up on him in fragments, but returning. It isn't just external reassurances, like how the Aurors' interest in his dreams has picked up significantly, or the way that redheaded Healer— _Weasley_ , he thinks with disdain—reacted to his parting comment last night.

He knows things now, and they aren't coming to him just in dreams. Every day he remembers just a little bit more. He can remember playing Quidditch against Potter—the frustrating fruitlessness of it, the rush of adrenaline when he caught sight of the Snitch, the vicious envy every time Potter's hand closed over it before his, and once—once—the feel of Potter's fist sinking into his belly, face twisted in a snarl of hatred cleaner, purer, than anything he's ever expressed in the present.

He remembers Hogwarts—only in flashes, but enough to get the sense of who he was—what he was—back in school. Slytherin prefect, a person of importance, respected by his Housemates for his power and by at least some of his professors for his intelligence, even as many condemned him as sly—"a dirty Slytherin." He remembers Dumbledore, an addled old fool who knew too much and revealed too little, and whose death in Malfoy's final year at Hogwarts caused less of a ripple than might have been expected—in Malfoy's life at least. Life goes on, after all, regardless of which Gryffindor is at the helm. He remembers Professor Snape, a sharp man who had found Malfoy deserving of the praise he doled out so stingily to other students, and who had earned an angry boy's respect in spite of his father's warnings that Snape was not a man to be trusted.

He remembers his father—tall and proud and sophisticated, an untouchable hero for a small child, a figure to emulate for an adolescent, until—something. He disappears from the picture, and Malfoy can't remember why—only its suddenness and importance. He remembers his mother, but less distinctly, a cool woman with a pinched face, who rarely touched him with affection, but sent him biscuits and trinkets at school. His later memories of her are strange and half shaded—angry, wild-eyed, and somehow…not quite her. He takes an angry breath, wishing he could unravel the threads knotted in his memory.

Most of all, though, he remembers himself. _Draco_. He remembers his name—entreaty, benediction, curse. He remembers his place in the world, and a half-formed, childish supposition that he lay at its center. He almost smiles at the folly of it, but that turns to a scowl. He didn't lie at the center of the universe, he knows. Potter did.

Oh, he remembers Potter, remembers that he knew Potter before he ever knew Potter—the books, the articles, the constant chatter and speculation about the Boy Who Lived, the almost mythic hero. Their fucking _savior_. 

He remembers the last time he saw Potter, that night at the lake, his face painted red by the sunset, eyes imploring behind his bloody stupid glasses.

_"What are you doing tomorrow?" Potter asked, one hand curled tight on Draco's arm._

_He narrowed his eyes, deliberately obtuse. "I'm going home."_

_"That's not what I mean, and you know it."_

_"But that's all you need to know, Potter."_

_They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, and Draco watched the expressions flickering across Potter's face—intent, wary, accusatory. "Fine," he said at last, relaxing his grip on Draco's arm. "You do whatever you want, Malfoy. You always do."_

_Draco was unable to control the involuntary twitch of his mouth at Potter's words, the memory of his father evoking a mixture of pride and pain and resignation. "It's never been a matter of what I want," he said, with more honesty than he'd intended._

_But Potter only looked angrier. "Everyone has choices."_

_"Maybe in your world, Potter."_

_He stepped closer, too close, an uncomfortable and unwelcome presence just inside of Draco's personal space. "In case you hadn't noticed, we inhabit the same bloody world."_

_Potter's ignorance was always remarkable, but this staggered. "_ Now _who's ignoring the point?"_

_Potter's eyes were almost black in the deepening twilight, his scar an angry slash across a forehead shockingly white against the darkness. Draco's eyes traced the contours of Potter's face, the edges honed by time and trial and near-starvation. Oh, Draco knew the stories, all right, had reveled in the tales of Potter's mistreatment by Muggles. Whether they were true or not, they certainly confirmed the Dark Lord's assertions about the inherent stupidity of Muggles and Mudbloods. But Draco had seen Potter's narrow wrists, the ribs that were too prominent early in the Quidditch season, the hollows in his cheeks almost every September. He guessed the stories were true._

_"I'll see you again after the war, Malfoy," Potter said, "and then you'll have to answer for your actions." He narrowed his eyes, and Draco felt a chill unrelated to the cool of evening. "I'll make you answer for them."_

_Resentment made him stand straighter. "Is that a promise?"_

_"Yeah," Potter said. "It is."_

_Draco laughed, short and bitter, fully aware of how appropriate it was that the only promise Potter would ever make him was a threat, and envying—only a little—Potter's confidence that he'd be able to make good on it. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to make promises, Potter?"_

_"You're always so full of good advice, Malfoy."_

_"Quite the sage, I like to think."_

_"That's a matter of opinion," Potter said, moving closer. "But, actually, I have a bit of advice for you."_

_Draco hated that he could feel the thump of his heart, the in-and-out whistle of each breath, the almost physical heat of Potter's gaze. He summoned his best approximation of a mocking smile. "Oh really? This I have to hear."_

_"First of all, you should remember that I always keep my promises."_

_Draco laughed, but the sound turned into a choke when Potter took yet another step, their bodies so close they nearly touched. He forced himself to breathe, forced himself not to think about the proximity of Potter's too-thin body._

_The determination was for naught when Potter ran a finger down Draco's forearm, making him jump. "And also, you should keep in mind"—Potter grabbed Draco's tie and yanked him forward, and Draco wondered if he'd ever breathe again, or if he could live off the breath Potter was fanning against his lips—"that there's more than one way to Mark someone."_

_Draco couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Potter's gaze bored into his before Draco's dropped helplessly to Potter's mouth, so close, so close, and he didn't_ really _want to kiss Potter, did he? Slytherins didn't kiss idiot Gryffindors, especially mad, marked-for-death ones like Harry bloody Potter. He felt Potter's breath against his mouth, a long exhalation, then a slow inhalation, and Draco closed his eyes, waiting, waiting…hoping—_

He curls his hands into fists, but doesn't open his eyes, cursing the day he ever met Harry Potter, cursing the curious combination of hatred and longing his memory calls forth, cursing his inability to understand himself.

He still doesn't remember how he came to be in hospital—doesn't remember anything about Potter's dying friend except as an annoyance back in school, a fly to be swatted. He's not certain why he's considered a threat, although he has vague recollections of blood and Dark Magic and intoxicating power that somehow still makes his blood race.

He wishes that were the only thing making his blood race these days.

* * *

When Tonks arrives at the Conference Room at Auror Headquarters, a group has already assembled, including Moody, which is no surprise, and Remus Lupin, which is. She recognizes a couple other members of SWORD who have tangentially worked on the Malfoy case, but Lupin has been her and Harry's main contact for months now. She feels anticipation begin to dance in her stomach.

"Tonks!" Moody barks, and she scrambles to pull out a chair and fall into her seat, clasping her hands in front of her like the angelic schoolgirl she never was.

"Now that we're all here," Remus says, slanting her one of his sly, quiet smiles, "I think we can begin, wouldn't you say, Alastor?"

"Out with it, Lupin. We're wasting time."

"Very well." Remus opens a folder in front of him. "As all of you are aware, for the last several months, I have been the primary Ministry research coordinator for the investigation into Draco Malfoy, and a number of perplexing questions remain, chief among them the identity of the spell Malfoy used the night of the raid at Malfoy Manor." He glances at the group seated around the table. "You all know the facts of the case, so I needn't bore you with the retelling."

Oh, yes, Tonks remembers the facts of the case. She's been working on it for the past five years, ever since Draco Malfoy somehow fell off the radar of the wizarding world. She'd been in the group of Aurors assigned to go to Malfoy Manor and take Draco into custody for questioning relating to the Death Eaters. She had almost hoped to convince Moody that they should wait at least a week, that it was a bad time—Lucius Malfoy had just been Kissed, and rumor was that her Aunt Narcissa had attempted suicide after the memorial ceremony the Malfoys reportedly held, with an empty coffin at the family's ancestral burial ground. But Moody had been strident, and so had Harry, particularly given the recent Death Eater breakout from Azkaban, so the team had descended on the Manor, only to discover that Draco was nowhere to be found, and Narcissa, far from near death, greeted them with harsh words and snapping eyes.

At least, they'd thought her Narcissa at the time.

Tonks skims a gold-tinted fingernail along the edges of the papers in front of her, still feeling residual frustration from the long fruitlessness of the past five years, after Draco went missing and Narcissa secluded herself inside the Manor. Spies who monitored her movements never saw her leave, and the remote tracking charm applied to her wand indicated it never moved from her bedchamber. The Aurors wondered if she'd given up magic entirely after her husband's de facto death.

Interestingly, Draco's wand never left the Manor either. People began to speculate that he was dead, perhaps murdered by Voldemort as punishment for his father's failures, perhaps dead by his own hand following the years of disgrace to his family.

Tonks never believed that Draco would turn suicidal, though, not after the fire she saw in his eyes that long-ago day in Diagon Alley. She knew he had to be out there somewhere. She sighs now as Remus clears his throat. Sometimes she almost wishes they'd never found Draco.

When evidence began to mount from well-placed sources that something untoward was going on at Malfoy Manor, the Aurors paid another surprise visit—but were surprised, instead, to find Narcissa Malfoy, a cluster of Death Eaters, and Draco himself there to greet them. Tonks had heard Harry suck in a sharp breath, then all hell broke loose.

The only thing she knew for sure later was that Draco had cast the first spell—something peculiar that she'd never heard before, and it had struck Harry the instant before Narcissa screamed the first " _Avada Kedavra!_ " The Aurors had responded instantly, instinctively, trying to Stun and capture, killing only when cornered. Somehow, in the melee, Ron Weasley had run forward into the line of fire, and he and Draco had been struck by some stray or rebounding curse. The next thing she knew, most of the Death Eaters were either dead or Stunned, Ron was unconscious, and Harry was pounding Draco Malfoy's head against the ground and screaming, while two other Aurors tried to drag him away or, failing that, Stun him into submission. He let go only when Draco finally was knocked unconscious.

When they'd pulled him off Draco, Harry had been bright-eyed with a sort of manic wrath, and magic almost radiated from him. They'd kept him in hospital under observation for about a week, and when they released him, he was even angrier and more hollow-eyed than he'd been before, spending hours at a time by Ron's bedside or throwing himself into his Auror duties with a fervor she hadn't seen in a long time.

Remus and the other researchers have been searching ever since for a clue about the spell Malfoy cast. Nobody wants to admit that it may have become their last hope of curing Ron.

Tonks looks down the table at Remus and does her best not to drum her fingers against the tabletop, ready to hear another report on SWORD's fruitless efforts on Ron's behalf.

"We think we've had a break in the case," Remus says, and Tonks's urge to drum abruptly disappears.

"Of what sort?" Moody growls.

"Several of our researchers in Dublin were charged with sorting through the library acquired from the O'Leary manor house raided last month, and translating as necessary. Among the books and papers found was a 16th century Gaelic-language manuscript referencing something called the Conditional Curses—curses based on conditional clauses, often psychological in basis, which make the spells' effects very difficult to predict." He pauses. "One of the spells referenced is called the Curse of the Occluded Heart."

" _Cor Celatum_ ," Tonks murmurs, and Remus smiles at her.

"Precisely. It's only speculation right now, of course, as the manuscript describes the curse but does not instruct the reader on how to cast it, so we cannot know for sure whether the spell Malfoy cast is, in fact, the Curse of the Occluded Heart, although the Latin does seem to point that way. But we're hopeful." He lifts a sheaf of papers from the folder in front of him. "If you all will take a look at the documents in front of you, you'll find images from the manuscript, along with annotated translation by our researchers."

Tonks shuffles the papers and skims excitedly through the manuscript's description of the spell's requirements and intended effects. Halfway through the first page, she is frowning. By the second page, the urge to laugh has become almost overwhelming. She clamps down on it and continues reading. Finally, though, the pressure becomes too much, and the laughter escapes in an explosion of loud peals that draws every eye to her.

"Remus," she wheezes, almost crying with mirth. "If you honestly believe _this_ could be the spell Draco Malfoy cast on Harry Potter during that raid, then you have finally gone 'round the twist, old man."

* * *

Harry turns another page in the red photo album with a frown. He'd found it waiting for him at the front desk of the hospital last night, Ginny having dropped it off so he wouldn't have even that excuse to seek out Malfoy. It's an odd feeling, now, knowing Malfoy has touched these pages, pored over this glimpse into Harry's past.

He should be looking over the files from the Avery investigation, which arrived—again, via unmarked owl—this morning. He should even be fretting over the message Tonks owled him this afternoon, which consisted of only: "Harry. WE HAVE TO TALK." But he is filled with a strange, unfocused bitterness today, verging almost on rage, that makes either concentration or conversation impossible.

Ron and Hermione smile up at him from almost every page, happy in spite of the knowledge that their time together is limited, relieved just to know they are all there now, and that they are, for the time being, safe—or as safe as they can be given the growing war and the target placed on their best friend's back by the most evil wizard in the world.

There are photos of them at the Burrow, with the Weasleys in better times, Fred and George mugging for the camera. Photos on the train. Photos of them in their favorite Hogwarts haunts. Photos on the Quidditch pitch, one of the few places where he'd been able to forget, just for a while, about prophecy and destiny and the shadow of war.

Crookshanks nudges an insistent head under his hand, and Harry spares him a few half-absent pats and a sad smile. When the cat settles next to his thigh, Harry leaves his fingers twisted in the ginger fur, feeling the low vibration of an inaudible purr.

He turns back to the album and pauses at the photo Malfoy had frowned over a couple of weeks ago. The photographic Malfoy's gaze flicks repeatedly to Harry and Ron and Ginny, by turns angry and sulking and confused. Harry watches him now, an almost inconspicuous figure hovering at the edge of the frame. He wishes he knew what Malfoy had been thinking at the time. Hell, he wishes he knew what Malfoy is thinking now. If only the Healers hadn't forbidden the use of Legilimency on Malfoy, fearing the effect it could have on a mind already detached, perhaps many of their questions could have been answered long ago. While Harry generally has few qualms about bending or even breaking rules that don't suit him—all in the name of the greater good, of course—this one Ginny impressed upon him. The Healers haven't eliminated the possibility of unknown spell damage to Malfoy's brain that prevents him access to his memories. The intrusion of another consciousness into his mind could cause the connection to be severed permanently.

Malfoy's image turns his back to Harry, Ron, and Ginny, then peeks again, stealthily, over his shoulder. Ginny, Harry notices, clearly sees Malfoy, and her expression is one she normally reserves for discussing topics like Cornelius Fudge, Percy and George's killers, and Voldemort. Malfoy looks worried. Harry thinks that might be the most sensible reaction he has ever observed in Malfoy.

When the knock comes at the door, he tries to ignore it, feeling too at home with his own anger to want to face anyone else just yet. Crookshanks, surprisingly sprightly for his advanced age, leaps off the sofa and bounds to the door to investigate. His curious meows, combined with another, louder knock, make Harry groan and heave the book off his lap in annoyance. He knows who it must be—only five other people are privy to the location of his flat, and Ron is his Secret-Keeper, so five people it remains. One is unconscious, one is out of the country, one is tied up in SWORD meetings at the Ministry all day, and one is on duty at Auror Headquarters, so that leaves one.

He grabs Crookshanks without ceremony, tucking the squirming cat under one arm and swinging the door open with more force than necessary. "Look, Ginny, I already told you—" He grinds to a halt and stares.

Hermione's smile is like the sun. "Hello, Harry."


	11. Preparations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 11 originally posted December 18, 2004.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised, Bow, and Supergrover24.

_"Hope" is the thing with feathers—  
That perches in the soul—  
And sings the tune without the words—  
And never stops—at all—_  
—Emily Dickinson

 

Darkness has already fallen, and Draco lies half asleep, fingers tangled in the drawstring of his pajama bottoms while he thinks about green-eyed Seekers in compromising positions, when the door opens to admit an expressionless Healer Weasley and the grizzled Auror who questioned him two weeks ago. "Ah," Draco murmurs. "Finally run out of Aurors, have we? If the Weasel is any indication, they appear to be dropping like flies."

Weasley gasps and her face falls into its familiar lines of resentment, but the corner of the Auror's mouth crooks upward, crinkling his ravaged face with what must pass for amusement. "No, boy, we haven't run out quite yet."

"Couldn't get enough of me, then?" He pushes himself upright as Weasley rounds the bed, pausing to make a mark on his chart before she draws a bottle of Veritaserum out of her pocket. Draco eyes it warily. "Aren't we a bit off schedule?"

"I have a few things I'd like to ask you," is all the Auror says.

He turns his head to look at Weasley, and she gives him a cold smile. "Open up, Malfoy."

He jerks away, turning back to the Auror. "This isn't part of the plan."

"It is now," the Auror says, and takes a seat, his wooden leg settling with a resolute _clunk_ against the floor.

"But—"

"Malfoy."

Stupidly, he turns back to Weasley, and she grips his jaw. "Open up."

 _Mmph_ , he replies.

"We can do this nicely, or you can make it hard on yourself. Your choice."

He locks eyes with her, ready to battle, when the Auror remarks conversationally, "I have Ministry clearance to use Unforgivables."

Draco freezes. His eyes close. Then slowly, reluctantly, he opens his mouth.

"Good boy," murmurs Weasley, clearly not without a sense of irony, and he feels three drops fall on his tongue, followed by the familiar tightening of his consciousness. He takes a deep breath and feels his muscles tense, then relax. 

"What is your name?" she asks, her voice coming as though from very far away.

"Draco Lucius Polaris Malfoy," he says, distantly surprised that he should know this, yet certain it's correct.

"Have you felt any change in the condition of your physical health in the last week?"

"Yes."

She blinks, surprised. "How so?"

"I feel stronger. Healthier."

"What changes have you noticed in your emotional health?"

"I've felt more excited lately. More hopeful."

"Why is that?"

"Because I'm remembering more."

She exchanges a look with the Auror. "You're certain of this?"

"Yes."

"How can you be certain?"

"I can't be absolutely certain, I suppose. But it all seems to fit together."

"What is your most recent memory before first awakening in this hospital room?"

"It's hard to tell, but I think it might be—" He pauses, frowns. "Standing in front of a house," he says, the memory coming to him in fragments, "facing a phalanx of Aurors."

She inhales sharply. "Why—"

"That will be sufficient, Healer Weasley, thank you."

She slowly, deliberately, lets out her breath, then turns to nod at the Auror with what is clearly hard-won poise. "Yes, sir, as you say. I'll return 45 minutes to check on the condition of the patient and help prepare him."

Her last words echo in Draco's head, but before he can try to make sense of them, the door closes with a click behind her and the Auror's gaze sharpens. "So, Mr. Malfoy. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"

* * *

"Hermione."

In his surprise, he drops Crookshanks and is engulfed in her warmth before the thought of her presence can even fully register, her still-frizzy hair tickling his nose, breasts flattened against his chest, her lips cold as they brush the side of his face in greeting. "Oh, I've missed you."

He wraps his arms around her, holds her close, eyes falling shut as he breathes the scent of vanilla and twill and cool evening air, Crookshanks's wild purr a distant, barely noticed rumble as the cat winds in and out around their ankles. "Yeah," he says, voice muffled in her hair, "me, too."

She draws back to look at him, grip firm on his shoulders as she holds him at arms-length. "Harry, you're so thin."

The corner of his mouth twitches upward in spite of himself. "You always say that, every time."

"That's because it's always true."

"Maybe I want to be skinny."

"And maybe you ought to eat more."

"Oh, and are you planning to hang around and cook for me?" She gives him a stern look. "What? You know I hate to do it myself." _Too many bad memories of the Dursleys_ , he doesn't say.

"I'm certain Mrs. Weasley wouldn't begrudge an extra plate at her table now and then, especially if it's you." He feels his heart drop into his stomach. "Where is Ron, anyway?" she continues, bending to pick up the ecstatic ginger cat. "I dropped by his place first, but it didn't look like anyone's been there in weeks."

"Hermione—" Harry begins.

A tiny ball of feathered energy swoops in on whirring wings, to twitter about Hermione's head, clearly excited by the sound of his master's name. 

"Pig?" Hermione says, automatically lifting one hand so the small owl can perch on her finger, hooting inquiringly. She turns to Harry, brow creased. "Harry, what's going on?"

He meets her eyes as he says, "Ron's in hospital," and catches the fleeting expression of shock and bewilderment that crosses her face before she squares her jaw. He notices, though, that her hand is shaking, and Pig wobbles a bit, but holds firm.

"How bad is it?" she asks.

"Bad," he says, and swallows. "Really bad. About as bad as it can get."

She pales and turns away, shoulders trembling.

"Hermione." He reaches for her, and she turns to him again. Her face is stark with pain, but her eyes are burning.

"Take me to him."

* * *

"Yes," Draco answers, as if he has any choice in the matter.

The old Auror rises from his chair and crosses the room, wooden leg thumping with every other step. "What do you remember about the night you just mentioned, when you faced a group of Aurors?"

"Almost nothing. I have an image in my head of the Aurors amassing on the lawn, but I don't know what was happening, or why they were there. Or even why _I_ was there."

"In that memory, how did you feel?"

Draco tries to put a mental finger on it. "Scared, I think. But—excited? It's hard to say."

"Do you remember where you were?"

"It feels like it might be…my home?"

"You're not certain?"

"Relatively certain. It seems familiar. But why would Aurors attack my home?"

"Do you remember being a Death Eater?" the Auror asks.

He wants to bite down on the answer, but he can't stop it. "Yes," he says, and realizes the idiocy of his question.

Something flares in the old man's eyes. "Tell me what you remember."

"I remember—an initiation ceremony with the Dark Lord. I told that other Auror about it—the clumsy one with the black hair." The Auror nods in acknowledgment. "I remember—" the memory chokes him, but he is compelled by the Veritaserum to continue. "—killing a girl, young, Muggle-born. I…I drank her blood from a chalice."

"Was that part of your initiation?"

"Yes."

"Did you take the Dark Mark willingly?"

He recalls his sense of awe and exultation as the Dark Lord seared the Mark into his arm. "Yes."

"Can you remember where the ceremony took place?"

"A hall of some sort. But I can't remember where it was or how I got there."

"Do you remember your father?"

"Only in small glimpses."

"What types of memories do you have of him?"

"I remember him when I was a child, how I looked up to him and how he wanted me to make him proud."

"How did he want you to go about making him proud?"

"Doing well in school, in Quidditch, with my peers. Bringing honor to the family name. Carrying on the family legacy."

"Can you describe the family legacy?"

"Power. Knowledge. Centuries of honors. Pureblood pride."

"Did you accept all of that?"

"Of course. He was my father. I believed in him."

"Did he ask you to join Voldemort's service?"

"I can't remember."

"Did your father serve Voldemort?"

"I think so."

"Can you remember seeing them together?"

"No."

"Then what makes you think your father worked with Voldemort?"

"The Dark Lord mentioned him during my initiation."

"How so?"

"He said he hoped I would prove as faithful a servant as my father."

"What do you remember of your father in your adult life?"

"Not much. I have no memory of him after my school years."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"No, I don't. Do you?"

The Auror scowls at him, but doesn't answer. "Do you remember your school days?"

"Some, yes."

"Do you remember Harry Potter?"

Another answer he desperately wishes he could withhold. "Yes."

"What did you think of him?"

"I thought he was an overrated pain in the arse with a hero complex and more blind courage than brains."

"Is that all?"

"No, I also found him strangely attractive." Draco feels a wave of mortification wash over him.

The Auror nearly smiles. "When did you begin to find him attractive?"

"Fifth year at Hogwarts. I think."

"Did you ever tell Potter you found him attractive?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I would never willingly give him that much power over me."

"Did you ever feel anything for Potter other than the attraction and the resentment you described?"

"I—" He fumbles for the right words, the truest ones. "He intrigued me."

"How so?"

"I didn't understand how someone who had suffered so much and who was clearly marked for death could still be so—ridiculously noble. I didn't understand how he could have faith in anybody, the way people seemed to fail him right and left. You'd think he'd have given up at some point, but no, he just kept trying to save the world."

"Did he try to save _you_ , Malfoy?"

The question startles him a little. "I suspect he thought he was trying to."

"He only _thought_ he was?"

"Yes."

"But he couldn't save you?"

"No. I didn't need saving."

"Why didn't you need saving?"

"Because I was certain I was doing the right thing. He couldn't have stopped me."

"Did it occur to you that, by joining Voldemort's service, you would potentially put yourself in the position of trying to kill Harry Potter?"

Draco feels an odd sort of twist in his gut. "Yes."

"Did that bother you?"

"Yes, a little."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to kill him, not really."

"Why?"

"Because—it was hard to imagine the world without him."

The Auror contemplates him in silence for a few moments, and Draco feels the instinctive desire to squirm. For once he is almost thankful for the way Veritaserum dulls his reactions.

"Do you remember anything about your life after your Death Eater initiation?"

"Some. Not much."

"Did you participate in any rituals?"

"I don't know. I can't remember."

"What do you remember?"

"Being in a library of some sort, doing research."

"What kind of research?"

"Ancient spells. Curses. Strange incantations."

"What were you using to perform this research?"

"Old books and manuscripts, some so antiquated I could hardly read them. Sometimes I had to use translation spells."

"The materials were in different languages?"

"Yes."

"Which languages?"

"All kinds. English, French, German, Hebrew, Gaelic, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Arabic, Chinese—"

"Where did the documents come from?" the Auror interrupts.

"I'm not sure," Draco says. "I think they'd been in the library a long time. I don't know where they came from originally."

"Where was the library?"

"I don't know. A basement of some sort?"

"What makes you say that?"

"There were no windows. I don't think there was an exit, or at least not one I could access."

The Auror contemplates him. "You were a prisoner?"

"I—maybe?" Draco furrows his brow in confusion. "I can't remember."

"Did you find anything useful in the course of your research?"

"I think so."

"What do you mean, you _think so_?"

"I'm not certain I found what I was looking for, but I think I found spells that were useful."

"What were you looking for?"

"A weapon of some kind, I think."

"But you're not certain you found it?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. I found—something."

"What did you find?"

"There was a curse that interested me more than most of the others I found, called the Curse of the Occluded Heart."

The Auror's expression doesn't change, but Draco notices the tension in him, even through his dulled senses. "Tell me about it."

"It was ancient magic, some sort of conditional magic, I think."

"What was the incantation?"

" _Cor Celatum_." The words roll off his tongue without thought, and stir some piece of buried knowledge. His sluggish mind gropes for it.

The Auror moves closer. "Does that sound familiar to you?"

"That's—" The realization hits him all at once. "That's the spell the Aurors ask about."

"Yes. Do you remember casting it?"

"No. Did I?"

"Do you remember what the curse does?"

"No. I don't remember anything specific about it, other than that it…felt right, somehow."

"Why did finding that curse excite you?"

"I'm not sure now. It was just a feeling I had, that it was what I was looking for, what I needed to win whatever battle I was fighting."

"Did you have a particular target in mind?"

"I can't remember."

He can almost hear the Auror gnash his teeth. "Who asked you to research those curses?"

"I think it might have been my mother."

"'Might have been.' You're not certain?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"The woman I remember looks like my mother, but I'm not sure it is she."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just a sense."

"Was she a relative, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," he echoes, not entirely convinced.

"Do you remember Ronald Weasley?"

"Yes, unfortunately." That little bit of truth slips out before he can even think to bite his lip against it.

The Auror's ears clearly perk up, and Draco curses himself. "Why do you say 'unfortunately'?"

There's no helping it now. "Because he was an unfortunate specimen of wizardkind."

"Do you hate Ronald Weasley?"

"I used to. I'm not sure about now."

"When did you hate him?"

"In school."

"And after?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he was a Muggle-loving blood traitor, and an embarrassment to the name of purebloods everywhere."

"According to your father's teachings, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Was that the only reason you hated him?"

"Our professors always went easier on him because he was a bloody Gryffindor, like Potter. Well, except Snape." Even the Veritaserum cannot prevent his smirk from surfacing.

"How did you feel about Weasley's connection with Potter?"

"I hated that Potter chose him over me." Immediately, he wants to kick himself.

"Were you envious of Ronald Weasley?"

"A little, yes." Forget kicking. Only death can save him now.

"You were angry that Potter chose to befriend Weasley and not you?"

"Yes."

"Enough to want to kill Ronald Weasley?"

Draco has to consider this. "No."

"No? Why not?"

"Because he wasn't worth the effort."

"He was beneath your notice?"

"No. But he should have been."

"According to your father?"

"Yes."

"You held your father in very high esteem, didn't you?"

"Yes, the highest."

"Your father taught you a lot."

"Yes."

"What is the most important thing he taught you?"

Draco considers, but though his memories of his father are hazy, the power of his lessons comes through clearly. "Loyalty to family," he says. "And revenge against those who betray you."

"Do you still believe in revenge?"

Draco meets the old Auror's eyes and almost smiles at the absurdity of the question. "Yes."

* * *

It is evening already, and when they Apparate outside the protective barriers of the hospital, there seem to be few people coming or going. "Is it visiting hours?" she asks.

Harry shrugs. "I doubt it."

"But—"

"Don't worry about it," he says, and takes her arm as they enter the hospital.

It is an unassuming brick building from the outside, a squat, ugly box one would expect to contain offices full of middle-aged Muggle businessmen with paunches and ugly ties, drinking bad coffee and generating useless paperwork. Instead, when they step inside, they find gleaming linoleum, the hovering scent of antiseptic, and seemingly endless corridors stretching in all directions. The witch at the front desk waves Harry through the security barricade without a word, but is poised to stop Hermione, when Harry says, "She's with me," and the witch bites her lip, then murmurs a few low words and waves Hermione through as well. She feels powerful magic wash over her as she steps through the portal, like walking through a sheet of cold rain, and she shivers.

Hermione cranes her neck to look around, tense—scared, even—but still fascinated. She catches a glimpse of flame-red hair over green Healer's robes down one corridor and wonders if it might be Ginny, but Harry pulls her in a different direction with barely a glance down that hall. She follows.

The lift they enter is large and sleek, and the doors slide closed with a _shush_ at Harry's command of "Incurable hexes." The words make Hermione wince.

The ascent is brief, smooth, and direct, and the doors open to another brightly lit corridor, populated by harried Healers and Mediwizards and –witches. Harry steers her to the left, past patients with trees growing out of their heads, who've turned green, who crow like roosters. The ward has an odd circus-like atmosphere, and Hermione feels ill thinking of Ron trapped here. Her eyes search every face for some sign of recognition, but though she sees scales and feathers and antennae and even, curiously, a satellite dish, she doesn't see Ron.

Then she notices that Harry is making a beeline for the closed door on the far wall and her heart leaps into her throat. She grabs his sleeve just as he reaches a hand for the doorknob. He turns to her, face blank. "Is he—contagious?" she asks.

He scowls. "Afraid of catching something?"

"Of course not!" she snaps, affronted at the very idea. "I just want to know what's wrong with him."

"You'll see," he says, turning away from her, then sighing heavily when she grabs him again. "What now?"

"If he's not contagious, why the private room?"

She thinks she sees a flash of guilt in Harry's eyes before he once again assumes that unnerving blank mask. "Well, for one, he's the son of a high-ranking Ministry official. And, of course," he says, sounding bitter, "he's one of my closest friends, which makes him even more of a target."

"Harry…."

He turns abruptly away and wrenches open the door.

When she follows him through, she feels another wave of protective magic cascade over her and realizes that someone must have arranged for the spell to recognize her magical signature before she even returned home. She wonders whether it was Harry or the Weasleys, but closes the door behind her without asking.

The figure lying on the bed is unnaturally still, and her first reaction is, _No, this can't be Ron, Ron is never not moving, he's never that quiet_. But the red hair, the long nose, the freckles—all are unmistakable, and her knees nearly buckle.

"Spell damage," Harry says, voice flat. "A bad raid. He got something I'm sure was meant for me."

"How long—?"

"It's been two months."

"Any sign of—?"

"No, no signs of recovery. No changes at all, other than the weight loss."

She makes a small, inarticulate sound of distress, and Harry almost seems about to move closer, or to put a hand on her arm, but he remains where he is. She takes a step toward Ron's bedside, then another, and realizes her vision is becoming blurry with tears. When she reaches the bedside chair, she collapses into it, relieved to notice the steady in and out of Ron's breathing. She isn't sure what she'd do if that big heart of his stopped beating. Funny, she thinks. Funny how someone who started out as such a nuisance, such an unlikely friend, could become so dear.

She sometimes finds it hard to remember a world in which she didn't love Ron, either as the friend of her childhood, or an adolescent crush, or this, whatever this is now, the mix of pain and pleasure the thought of him evokes, how she never feels more truly alive than when they are together—sparring, usually, but there is comfort in that kind of predictable unpredictability. It never takes long to figure out where she stands with Ron, and his volatility seems to feed something in her practical soul. For once, this is something she can't begin to explain.

Funny, she thinks again, how she could harbor this depth of feeling for someone she's never kissed, never even touched—overtly, anyway—with anything more than friendship or, at most, deep affection. She slides her hand across the bed to grasp Ron's, strangely cool against the warmth of her palm, and she weaves her fingers with his, remembering the feel of his oversized paw (oh, how she'd teased him about that) curling around her arm, or plucking at her frizzy hair, the heat that seemed to radiate off him, the way his touches occasionally lingered, making her wonder if—maybe—now he might…? But no, he didn't. He never.

She feels his pulse beating against hers, steady, but weaker than it should be, and wants to press her flesh into his, blood into blood, bone into bone. She would give him her life, if she could. He's already owned her heart for almost half a lifetime, if he'd only realized it.

"How long do the Healers give him?" she asks, straining to be practical even as she feels a tear slide down her cheek.

"They don't know," Harry says behind her. She can sense him hovering, peering over her shoulder, but he doesn't come any closer. "He could stay like this forever, or at least until his body stops absorbing nutrients."

"Can he hear us?"

"I don't know."

"He's never shown any response when you talk to him?"

"No."

She wonders how often Harry has been here to visit Ron and sit in this same chair, perhaps even take Ron's hand just like this. From the way the Healers and other hospital staff hardly seem to bat an eye at his presence, it doesn't take keen deductive reasoning to know he's become a fixture.

"What happened?"

"Malfoy," he says, the single word pregnant with loathing.

"But—" Hermione twists to look at him.

"We found him," he says. "And he did _that_."

"How?"

He shrugs. "Not sure. Some unknown spell, we think. The Healers and researchers are trying to figure it out."

"Where is Malfoy now?"

He hesitates. "I can't tell you that."

"In Azkaban or worse, I hope," she says, feeling old hatred flare, low but steady. "And to think, I'd wondered—" She shakes her head in disgust and turns back to Ron.

Harry slouches against the wall next to her. "You wondered what?"

She shakes her head again. "Nothing. Just a stupid idea I had."

"Hermione, with all due respect, you've come up with some mad schemes in the past, but of all the people I know, you're the one _least_ likely to come out with anything I'd call a 'stupid' idea."

She glances at his wry expression and can't help but crack a small smile before she sighs again. "All right, maybe not stupid, but highly far-fetched."

"Try me."

She looks away again, almost embarrassed to meet his eyes. "Just an odd notion I got in my head. We had a spy placed somewhere high in the Death Eater network—I never knew his name—or her name, I suppose, but I'm almost certain it was a he. We received all communication in the form of letters that came to us via a form of inanimate object Apparation—we discovered it was a modified version of an ancient Persian spell that had been lost to time. That's how we began developing the spell we use now to teleport our own communication," she explains, beginning to warm to her subject. Then she looks at Harry and sees his eyes start to glaze over, and realizes this is, perhaps, not the time for scholarly digressions. "Er. So, we received communication via teleported letters keyed to be sent straight to us. The letters were always brusque, as if the task were distasteful to the writer. But the information was devastating, and we were able to infiltrate several Death Eater camps and make a number of arrests." She strokes her thumb along the back of Ron's hand, remembering. "Then something happened. Not all the letters contained accurate information, almost as though the source was deliberately trying to lead us into traps—we took a few hits before we realized a pattern was developing. But not all of the letters were incorrect. One of our analysts compared several of the letters, ones with information that helped us versus ones that had been false. He determined that the letters were the same paper, same ink, same spell used to send them, even the same handwriting—although that could easily be approximated with a simple spell, of course—but the phrasing was slightly different, the tone slightly off in the letters that provided false information."

"Someone had sent decoy letters?" Harry asks.

"It appeared so. Shortly after that, we stopped receiving letters with helpful intelligence, and after a few more such decoys, the letters stopped altogether."

"What happened?"

Hermione shakes her head. "We don't know. We suspect someone either intercepted the communication and changed it—unlikely, given the spell used to transport the letters—or discovered what the spy was doing and attempted to use the channel for his or her own ends. When the letters stopped entirely, we figured the spy probably had been captured or killed."

Harry shrugs. "So what does all this have to do with Malfoy?"

"Well…." Hermione feels her cheeks redden in embarrassment at what strikes her now as the complete preposterousness of the idea. "I thought, perhaps, for a while, that the spy might be Malfoy."

Harry stares at her for a few seconds in complete silence, then, slowly, starts to laugh, a low, sharp sound that makes her wince. "You're having me on."

"No," she says, "I'm not."

He stops laughing. "What on earth would make you even consider the idea? You knew Malfoy as well as I did back in school. You know what an absolute prat he was, how much he admired his worthless father."

"He also admired Snape a great deal," she points out.

"Yes, but not at the expense of his _father_ , Voldemort's fucking right-hand man."

"His father did end up in Azkaban back in fifth year."

"Which just turned Malfoy meaner. You know that, Hermione!"

"Maybe I do," she says, starting to feel annoyed, "but I had my reasons."

He crosses his arms across his chest. "OK, try me."

"Number one, the communications started shortly after Lucius Malfoy was Kissed, and after the second Death Eater breakout from Azkaban."

Harry frowns. "That's when Malfoy disappeared."

"Precisely."

"His father died in Voldemort's service. What makes you think Malfoy would turn against that to help our side?"

"Perhaps Malfoy felt betrayed by the Death Eaters?"

"But he was one of them!"

"We don't know that for sure."

"Yes," he says, darkly. "We do."

"You—oh," she says, remembering that Malfoy is in Ministry custody now. Of course they would have looked. Of course they would have asked. "He still might have turned spy. Snape did, after all. And the spy knew a lot about Death Eater plans and strategies."

"I still say it's inconclusive," he says. "Is that all you've got?"

"No," she snaps, "of course not. Number two, most of the information we received pertained to Death Eater activity in the south of England. Malfoy Manor is located in Wiltshire."

"Hermione, _most_ Death Eater encampments are in the south of England. It stands to reason that most of the activity would be there, spy or no spy."

"Yes, but when we traced the points on a map, Malfoy Manor was near the center."

"The Death Eaters were using it as a headquarters of some sort, so it makes sense that most of the activity would be around there. That doesn't mean your spy was located there."

"Number three," she continues, ignoring him, "there were certain ways the letters were written that reminded me of Malfoy."

"What do you mean?"

She frowns, then shakes her head. "It's hard to explain. Just…something about the phrases the writer used reminded me of how Malfoy used to talk."

"Did the letters talk about mudbloods and Muggle-lovers?" he sneers.

It's times like this she's grateful for the willpower she's been forced to build up, both as an OUTWIT operative and as Harry and Ron's friend. Without it, Harry would without doubt be laid out flat on his bony arse right now. "No," she says. "They did not. They did, however, indicate that the letter-writer felt superior to whomever he was addressing, yet they were somehow still…fearful, I suppose."

"Arrogant yet cowardly," Harry muses. "That _does_ sound rather like Malfoy."

"Number four," she says, biting back her response to his comments, "the letters were always signed with a Malfoy-esque flourish."

Harry snorts. "Don't tell me he signed his own name?"

"Of course not," she says, giving in to the desire to glare. "And all the letters were in code—except for the closing, which was always the same, and always written in rather absurdly elaborate script."

"What name did the spy sign?"

"No name," she says. "Just a closing remark. Every time, the letters ended simply, _à demain_."

"A what?"

" _Demain_."

"Demon? Well, that certainly fits Malfoy."

She sighs. "No. _Demain_. It's French. It means _tomorrow_."

Harry blanches.

* * *

A warning knock sounds before the door swings open and Healer Weasley pokes her head in. "Are you ready, sir?"

The Auror frowns at Draco—not hostilely, but considering. "Yes," he says at last. "I believe that will be sufficient for now."

The Healer comes in, followed by two Mediwizards who hover near the door, looking very tall and strong as they wait for her cue. She moves briskly to Draco's bedside as the Auror steps away, and she grips his chin with a surprisingly strong hand and uses her wand to shine a tiny pinpoint of light into each of his eyes in turn before nodding in satisfaction. "The Veritaserum should remain at full strength for at least another hour, so we've plenty of time."

Draco blinks, the Veritaserum making him feel as if he is being held underwater, where he can glimpse the light but not quite break the surface. Everything seems to move more slowly. "I thought Veritaserum usually wore off faster than that," he says.

The Healer smirks, but it is the old Auror who answers. "Weasley gave you a larger dose today, Malfoy. It's only a precaution."

"What do you mean, a precaution?" he asks. "What's going on?"

This time the Healer speaks up. "There's nothing more we can do for you here, so you're being moved to the high-security wing at St. Mungo's."

"What?" Panic claws at him. "When?"

Her smile is slow, genuine, and frightening. "Right now."


	12. The Occluded Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 12 originally posted May 9, 2005.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised, Bow, and Marks.

_And I knew that I was going to learn again,  
Again, in this less hazy light,  
I saw the fields beyond the fields, the fields beyond the fields._  
—Dar Williams, "The End of the Summer"

 

Ginny wishes sometimes that she were a more forgiving person.

When she was a child, her brothers used to tease her about her temper, her capacity for anger. They thought it funny how her face would turn pink with fury and she'd let loose with a Bat Bogey Hex or two. Until she got quicker on the draw, that is, and actually managed to hit them consistently and effectively.

Everyone in the family has a temper, to some extent—even her father, though he is the most mild-mannered of the bunch—but while most of the Weasley brood have tempers like Molly's, that blow up in sudden surges, then pass with the speed of a spring rainstorm, Ginny always has been capable of holding grudges for long periods of time, nursing resentments to her chest until others have all but forgotten the dispute entirely. When she was ten, she stopped speaking to Fred and George for a month after they teased her about the way she'd blushed and stammered over meeting Harry Potter, only forgiving them when she needed their help to hex Ron's bedroom over an entirely different slight. Actually, Ron was the only one in the family who could rival her in terms of grudges, though it seemed to take him more effort—to cost him more emotionally—for him to hold onto anger for long periods of time. She's a little ashamed, really, of how easily the talent, such as it is, comes to her.

There are grudges she regrets now—the one against Fred and George, for example, because she'd do anything to have that month with George back. But there are others she can't help but feel justified in. She never forgave Snape for his snide comments about her family over the years, and though Snape is rightly regarded as a hero in the Order, she doesn't believe that excuses him from being such a miserable human being when he was alive. And, strangely tempting though it's been these last few months to think of Draco Malfoy as other than the spoiled, petty bastard she knew at Hogwarts, now that his memory is returning, complete with his acerbic personality, she won't let herself feel bad about her hatred of him any longer. 

She'd begun to wonder if it was really fair to hate a man for things he can't remember—for being a Death Eater, for taunting her as a child, for attacking her brother, for hurting Harry over and over and over again. She can remember Harry in his last term at Hogwarts, how after years of fighting with, then ignoring, Draco Malfoy, Harry had begun to watch him, unaware of—or unconcerned with—anybody's notice. But Ginny always noticed Harry. Though their brief, sweet, slightly awkward romance had flared and fizzled in the first few months of her sixth year, that didn't stop her watching out for him. He might no longer be her boyfriend, but he would always be her seventh brother, her first love, her childhood hero. So when he began looking at Draco Malfoy with a confused, but intrigued, light in his eyes, Ginny definitely noticed. 

She'd followed him at a discreet distance one morning before dawn as he took his usual walk to the lakeshore to watch the sunrise, only to halt, shocked, when she realized who he met there. It was like a vision out of a potion-induced dream—Harry and Malfoy sitting in companionable silence, broken only by the occasional exchange of startlingly mild insults, which seemed more for show than anything else. 

_What has Malfoy done?_ she wondered. _What spell does he have over Harry, to keep him here?_ She watched as Harry's hand crept closer to Malfoy's, the move apparently unconscious on Harry's part, until their fingers brushed together and rested there, the barest connection of flesh to flesh.

Ginny remembered the feel of that hand, palm Quidditch-roughened—more so, even, than her own—fingers gentle as they touched her with a sort of awed reverence, yet shaking with restrained eagerness. He'd been her first, and she his, so it had been awkward and fumbling and messy and incredibly wonderful. She still blushes sometimes at the memory of him, naked to her gaze for the first time, lean but strong, and hard for her, which was the most unbelievable part of it all. Years of girlish dreams and late-night teenage fantasies, and finally she'd known what it felt like to touch that pale skin, the surprising weight of him on top of her, the leashed power as he moved in and out of her body, the ragged sound of his breathing as he pressed his face to her neck and came, gasping her name…and it was better than any dream. It should have been perfect. It should have been the stuff fairy tales and legends and epic poetry are made of—boy hero and earnest young love, fated to be together for eternity. Reality, though, was more prosaic, and once the initial thrill of mutually disposing of their virginity had passed, they realized they were much more comfortable as friends and had resumed their old roles, each with a deeper knowledge of the other, perhaps a deeper affection, but no real bitterness. Ironic, she still thinks sometimes, that the only perfect part of their relationship was the way it ended.

She's never been ignorant or blind. She knows Harry has dated others, slept around. She knew even then that others weren't blind to his charms, and that it wouldn't take long for him to find someone to take her place. For a while, there'd been Lisa Turpin, then, briefly, Luna Lovegood. But they were extracurricular. They didn't distract Harry's attention from school, and friends, and preparations for war.

Draco Malfoy distracted him.

Ginny watched Harry watch him over the course of months, a strange sort of fondness in his expression, a glint of challenge in his eyes that only grew warmer as the weeks wore on. She was confused and, to tell the truth, a little alarmed that she couldn't dismiss Harry's persistent gaze as that of a warrior learning his enemy.

But what was worse was when she noticed Malfoy looking back. It was nothing as overt as Harry's stare—it didn't take much to have more discretion than Harry Potter—but when Harry's attention was elsewhere, Malfoy's gaze seemed drawn to him, faintly puzzled, exasperated, defiant, even a little frightened. The last made her feel a stab of vicious satisfaction. _You should be frightened_ , she thought. _You should be fucking terrified. Harry is going to help destroy everything you and your House and your misbegotten family stand for, and you're not fit to breathe the same air he does._ But that didn't stop him meeting Harry by the lake every morning, and didn't make him flinch away from Harry's quiet touches.

Finally, on the last day of the term, the last day before they all would board the Hogwarts Express to King's Cross for the summer holidays, before Harry and Ron and Hermione and even Malfoy would split up to seek their fates, she watched Harry's eyes track Malfoy's movements in the Great Hall over breakfast, a determined set to his jaw, and she resolved to put an end to this farce. Harry might harbor some hope of forming an alliance with Malfoy, drawing him over to their side, but she knew better. She'd grown up knowing the treachery of other pureblood families who cared only about their own power and influence. She knew how Lucius Malfoy had treated her father for years at the Ministry. She knew the horror he had knowingly inflicted on an eleven-year-old girl, knew the nightmares that haunted her still and woke her, gasping with silent screams. And she knew the son was just like the father.

When she saw Draco Malfoy steal out of the Great Hall while Harry's back was turned, she followed. 

He strode in the direction of the stairwell leading down to the dungeons, and she raced after him, grateful for once for the long legs that had discouraged so many boys from asking her out, too self-conscious to be seen dating a girl taller than themselves. Her height had never bothered Harry, but, then again, many teenage girls were as tall as or taller than Harry.

"Malfoy!" she shouted as he began to descend the stairs.

For a moment, she thought he'd ignore her completely, but then he paused and half-turned to glance over his shoulder to where she'd halted behind him. "Weasley," he said, voice infused with the kind of pleasantness that could only be meant to convey contempt. "How might I be of service to you?"

She glanced around to make sure they weren't about to be overheard. "I want you to stop what you're doing to Harry."

She had to give him credit; he didn't so much as bat an eye at her demand. "And just what is it you think I'm doing to Potter?"

"I don't know what kind of plan you're hatching, but I want you to leave Harry alone. I know you see him every morning, and I've seen you watching him." Malfoy's lids lowered, veiling his eyes, and she thought she might have caught him off-guard with that revelation. "Stay away from him, Malfoy."

He shrugged. "And what business is it of yours how much time I spend with Potter? That's Potter's choice, isn't it?"

She glared. "I don't know how you've convinced him you're worth spending time with. Maybe you've even Confunded him. He'd never spend time with you willingly."

Malfoy's mouth quirked. "You don't think very highly of Potter's ability to defend himself, do you?"

"That isn't it at all," she replied, clinging to calm with an iron hold. "I'm warning you. Harry's smart, and he's extremely well-protected, and no matter how hard you try to get under his skin, that will never change who he is, and who you are."

"Oh?" he said, eyes flashing. "And just who is that?"

"Son of a Death Eater, probably a Death Eater yourself. A selfish, arrogant Pureblood prick. You've never done anything fairly when it was easier to cheat, and never looked at anyone without calculating how they could serve you. You stand for everything Harry's against, and he won't forget that. None of us will."

"If that's true, then why does Potter spend time with me?"

"I'm certain you've tricked him somehow. Maybe led him to believe you're not as petty and evil as you are."

"Perhaps Potter has begun to harbor tender feelings for me," Malfoy smirked.

The comment hit a little too close to her suspicions, so she snorted and narrowed her eyes at him. "As if Harry would ever give a damn about you."

He sneered. "Perhaps _I_ have begun to harbor tender feelings for _him_."

Now she laughed. "Malfoy, the only 'tender feelings' you harbor are your adoration for yourself, and maybe for your father." She bent closer, no longer laughing. "I know you still write to him, Malfoy. I know you _idolize_ him. Do you think no one else will think it suspicious that you've suddenly struck up a friendship with Harry Potter, when your father has been directly involved in three separate threats on his life—and that few only because he's been in prison for the last two years? Do you think people won't _wonder_?"

He regarded her in stony silence.

"Even if your intention _weren't_ to hurt him—which I don't believe for a minute—you can't honestly believe Harry would follow you, would have anything to do with you after you've left school. Maybe you're an interesting puzzle for him right now, maybe he thinks he can reach you somehow, but we both know he's wrong, don't we, Malfoy?"

"You don't know me," he growled.

"Look me in the eye," she said, "and tell me you have no intention of following in your father's footsteps."

His eyes met hers, looking strangely dead. "Shouldn't you be afraid of me, little Gryffindor?" he mocked, voice low. "Aren't you afraid I'll whip out my wand and strike you dead where you stand? There are no witnesses here, after all."

"I will never be afraid of you," she hissed. "You, on the other hand, you and your whole kind—the only thing that motivates you is fear—fear of losing control, fear of others gaining more power, fear that others will realize what petty, insignificant beings you really are beneath your bluster and spectacle. I've never known anyone more afraid of the outside world than you fucking Death Eaters."

His voice was flat. "I'm not a Death Eater."

"Maybe not," she said. "But you will be."

He didn't reply.

She leaned closer yet. "Stay away from him," she said. "If you know what's good for you, you'll leave him alone. He'll wise up to you eventually, you know. You might be able to pretend friendship or whatever 'tender feeling' now, but Harry knows who and what you are, and even if he seems to be overlooking that at the moment, he's never going to forget it. So just _stay away from him_."

The words echo in her mind now as she watches Malfoy's wide, panicked eyes dart repeatedly toward the door as Moody strips him of a layer of the protective spells—the ones preventing outside harm, so he can be restrained if necessary—though she knows Malfoy is well aware that escape is impossible. She wonders if he's hoping Harry will come to find him. But Harry won't come. He promised, and Harry keeps his promises.

"Weasley," Moody grunts, and she turns her full attention to the Auror presiding over Malfoy's transport. "Where is Nymphadora Tonks?" he asks.

She blinks and is horrified to feel herself blushing. "I—don't know. She—"

"Don't play games with me, girl. I know what goes on." Indeed, that mad eye seems to see right through her to the memory of the unbelievable orgasm Tonks had brought her to the night before, and which she now can't _stop_ thinking about. She gives Moody a wobbly smile. He, naturally, does not respond in kind. "Find out where she is," he snaps. "She should be here to assist with the transport. I will be extremely displeased if she's forgotten her duties."

"I'm—sure she hasn't," she manages, mind racing. Where in blazes _is_ Tonks? She'd mentioned earlier today that she'd be at the hospital this evening, and while she might not be the most be the most graceful creature on two feet, she's not forgetful. "I'll check with the front desk," she says, and turns to the two mediwizards. "Malfoy is not to leave this room, and no one is to enter other than Nymphadora Tonks and myself. I'll be back shortly."

She feels Malfoy's gaze on her as she leaves the room, and the thought of the blank despair on his face follows her as she strides down the hall.

* * *

There is a knock at the door to Ron's room, and Harry is abruptly, profoundly grateful for the interruption. His mind is whirling, and in the prolonged silence, the annoyance in Hermione's gaze had begun to turn to speculation, and he can't face that right now.

He turns and opens the door a crack to find one of the ward mediwitches standing outside. "Mr. Potter. I thought I saw you come in here."

"Yes?"

"There's an Auror looking for you," she says, and he glances over her shoulder to see Tonks standing behind her, wearing one of the serious expressions that always look so incongruous stamped over her mobile features. "I wasn't sure you'd want to be disturbed," the mediwitch continues, her tone just the slightest bit arch.

In another world, he might be amused by the protective deference he receives from the hospital staff—and most others in the wizarding world, really—but this isn't another world, and so he works up his best imitation of a smile. "No, no, it's fine. Tonks is a friend of the family, and she has clearance to be here." 

He steps aside, not missing the way Tonks sails by the mediwitch with a haughty air, the effect ruined when she scuffs the sole of her shoe against the linoleum and pitches forward into the room, catching herself on Hermione's chair. "Hermione!" she says brightly, and Harry sighs and thanks the mediwitch before closing the door.

"Ginny said you'd be home soon!" Tonks is saying, and Hermione smiles at her and opens her mouth to reply.

"Did you need something, Tonks?" Harry interrupts, and both women turn to him with expressions of irritation.

"You didn't owl me back," Tonks accuses.

"I wasn't under the impression a reply was necessary."

"What else does 'WE NEED TO TALK' imply?"

He gives her a pointed look. "That you'll find me later?"

She scowls.

Hermione glances back and forth between them, her eyebrows raised. "Should I leave the two of you alone?" she asks, the fierce grip she maintains on Ron's limp hand exposing the question for the rhetorical comment it is.

Harry exhales slowly. "No," he says. "No. We're fine." He turns back to Tonks, who watches him out of narrowed eyes. "I'm sorry I was rude, Tonks."

Her jaw remains set, but she nods.

They eye each other warily. Hermione shakes her head and mutters something about children.

Finally, Harry asks, "You had something to talk to me about?"

"It's about…the Malfoy case," Tonks says, her gaze sliding toward Hermione.

"Hermione knows about it already," he says, watching her stroke Ron's fingers silently.

A perplexed frown crosses Tonks's brow. "Does she know he's…?" Her hands flail.

"Alive?" he guesses. "Yes," he says when she nods.

"But does she know he's…?" She directs her eyes toward the floor.

"No," he says.

"Well, it's—I think this will be OK to tell. I don't think it will come to anything anyway, really. Moody nearly chased me out of the meeting when I started laughing—"

"Tonks?" Harry prompts.

She shakes her head. "Right. Right! Anyway, it's about the spell Malfoy used. Remus and the SWORD team think they've found it." A bolt of hope surges through Harry so fiercely, he barely hears Tonks prattling on. "…think it's codswallop, of course, but Moody said—"

"Tonks," he interrupts. "What did Remus say the spell was? Can they—fix it?" He can feel the tension radiating off Hermione.

"Well," Tonks says, "no one's sure. Even if this _is_ the spell Draco used, this isn't the intended outcome."

"What _is_ the intended outcome, then?"

"Well," Tonks says again, "no one's sure about that either. You see, it's a Conditional Curse."

Hermione immediately gives up all pretense of not listening intently to the conversation. "Conditional Curses? But those haven't been used in centuries!"

"That's what we thought," Tonks says. "But Remus thinks there's a possibility that—"

"Would someone mind explaining just what in God's name a Conditional Curse is?"

The two turn to him, as if they'd forgotten he was in the room at all. "Honestly, Harry," Hermione sighs. "Didn't you _ever_ pay attention in History of Magic?"

He gives her a look meant to imply _How can a smart girl like you ask such a stupid question?_ She purses her lips.

"The Conditional Curses," she says, "were a branch of magic that fell into disuse around the time the Renaissance was taking place in Muggle Europe. They were essentially magic with a built-in 'if' clause—if conditions fall a certain way, one outcome occurs, but if another set of conditions were in place, a different outcome would occur."

Harry frowns. "Sounds like an accident waiting to happen."

"Exactly. The magic was remarkably imprecise, and even a small shift in the variables could cause any number of unintended consequences. They enjoyed popularity for a while among the moneyed elite, particularly for use in revenge schemes, in which the victim might be aware of the positive outcome of a particular spell, but not the negative one."

"Revenge schemes," Harry echoes, gaze trailing to the still figure on the bed. Then he lifts his eyes to meet Tonks's. "Tell me about Malfoy's spell."

She sighs. "The spell Remus found is called the Curse of the Occluded Heart."

" _Cor Celatum_?" Harry says.

"Well, the text SWORD found didn't include the incantation or any instructions on how to perform the spell. It was more a treatise of sorts."

"It fits, though," Harry says, his heart starting to beat a little faster.

"Well…yeah," Tonks replies, clearly reluctant. "But you haven't heard what it does yet. The conditions are psychological. If the person on whom the spell is cast believes that the person casting the spell loves them or cares about them, when actually the opposite is true, the curse magnifies the effects of any spell cast on the victim."

"So," Hermione says, brow wrinkled in thought, "if, for instance, I really hated Harry, but pretended to be his friend, and he believed me, if I cast the curse on him, then followed it up with, say, a _Tarantallegra_ —"

"—he'd probably dance himself to death," Tonks says.

"But what if it's something good, like a healing charm?" Harry asks.

"The curse magnifies the spell in a negative way. So if I tried to heal your broken bone, maybe all the bones in your body would fuse together."

"That's horrible," Hermione whispers.

"But that doesn't apply to me," Harry says. "It's not like I went to the Manor that night and saw Malfoy and thought, 'Wow, what a terrific friend I have in him.' I knew he hated me. Even if I hadn't known it before, I'd have known it just by looking at him."

"Well," Tonks says, squirming a little, "that's because Remus thinks Malfoy might have intended to hit you with the flip side of the curse."

"Flip side?"

"Remember, it's conditional. So, if you think someone loves you, but really they hate you, it has negative consequences. If there's no misunderstanding, the spell has no effect at all. But if the conditions are the reverse of the first ones…."

"You mean," Hermione says, frowning, "if you think someone hates you, when really…they love you?"

"Right," Tonks says, looking miserable. "Then it turns into a protection spell."

Harry stares, the words not registering at first. Then— "That's bollocks! That's complete and utter—"

"Shut up, Harry!" Hermione snaps, gaze avid on Tonks. "How does it work? Why does Professor Lupin think that might be the spell?"

Tonks sighs again and eyes Harry warily. "If any spell with intent to harm is cast on the victim, the curse will cause the spell to rebound, in a weakened form, toward the person who cast the Curse of the Occluded Heart."

"So the person who cast the curse takes the other person's hits _for_ them?"

"Yes."

"What about the Killing Curse?" Hermione asks.

Tonks's eyes are still on Harry. "Even that, in theory."

"Would the person who cast the conditional curse die?"

"No," Tonks says. "The rebounding weakens the curse, so they might be sickened or knocked unconscious, but they wouldn't die unless they were hit with too many curses in too short a period of time. The part that interested Remus," Tonks's eyes hold Harry's, "is what happens when someone else accidentally intercepts a rebounding curse, like Aurora of Alsace in the sixteenth century."

Harry only raises an eyebrow, still unconvinced.

Tonks's gaze moves from Harry to the still form on the bed. "Coma," she whispers. "If the spell is powerful enough."

Hermione makes a choked sound, and Harry stares at Ron, lying so still, and at Hermione, her eyes suddenly shining with hope. "But it's—" he stammers. "It can't—"

"Is there a way to cure him?" Hermione demands.

Tonks grimaces, and her voice is thick with tears. "It didn't say, exactly. The text only said something about 'love freely given from an unexpected source.'"

"But—how?"

Tonks shakes her head. "I don't know."

Hermione frowns, thoughtful.

Harry looks back and forth between the two of them. "You can't seriously be entertaining the idea that this might be the spell. Don't you understand what that would mean? That Malfoy is _in love with me_." He is horrified to realize he is shaking, and tells himself that it is with anger.

"I know how ridiculous it sounds," Tonks says. "That's why I started laughing at the meeting. But Moody—well, he seems to thinks there might be some possibility there."

"He—what?" There definitely is anger now, bright and hot and unfocused. "He can't—there's no—" He sputters, his mind thrashing for the right words, but all that comes out is a shocked, plaintive, " _Why?_ "

"The interviews," Tonks says. "The questions under Veritaserum."

"But—Malfoy. He's not—" Something in his head is screaming wordlessly, one long, shrill shriek of denial. _What if he did?_ something tries to whisper, but is swallowed in the blank, endless noise. "He's not!" he almost shouts.

"Harry," Hermione says, turning to him again, her face pale with shock and tension and concern, a frown in her eyes. "How do you know he's _not_?"

"I would know!" he says. "How could I not know!" _He never—he didn't—doesn't—couldn't—Death Eater—murderer—_ "If he—he wouldn't have—" He clenches his fists and tries to breathe, tries not to scream.

"How could you not know," Hermione echoes softly, looking again at Ron, then turning sharply back to Tonks. "Wait—'love freely given from an unexpected source,' you said?"

"I—" Tonks shakes her head, as though to clear it. "Yeah. That's what the manuscript said."

"Does it have to be love disguised as hate?" she asks, ignoring Harry's inarticulate noise of protest.

"I don't know—it didn't explain."

"What if," she murmurs, clasping Ron's hand more tightly between hers, "it's only love someone was far too thick-headed to recognize?"

Her meaning slices cleanly through the haze of Harry's anger. "Hermione, what—"

"Maybe," she whispers, "maybe." She leans over Ron, one trembling hand pressed to his cheek, the other holding his hand to her heart. "Ron," she murmurs, and presses her mouth to his. When she lifts her head, there is no sign, no movement, and she begins to shake. "Oh, God. Oh, fuck, I'd hoped—"

Then Ron takes a deep breath, and his eyes open and focus, slowly, on Hermione.

The raw, choked sob that rips from her throat is like nothing Harry's ever heard before.

Tonks's eyes are round O's of shock, and Harry feels frozen, as though the world has clicked into place and stopped, just stopped in this instant.

"Hermione," Ron manages, voice gravelly with disuse, as his eyes dart around the room. "Harry. Tonks. What's going on?"

Hermione is sobbing openly now, tears streaking her cheeks. "We came to wake the sleeping beauty," she laughs and cries, pressing her hands to his cheeks as though she can't quite believe he's real. She captures his mouth with hers again, shaking from head to toe, and one of Ron's hands rises from the bed and hesitantly settles on Hermione's hair, as though unsure of its welcome, before slowly beginning to stroke the tumbled curls. Harry glances away, his own surging joy desperate to be expressed, yet feeling uncomfortably as though he's intruding on a private moment.

When the door swings open suddenly, he jumps with surprise, wand instantly in hand.

Two Healers burst into the room. "The alarm—" says the first, then they both stop dead, eyes widening at the sight of Ron awake and blinking, Hermione's hands still on his face, her eyes wary and almost vicious. Without taking his gaze off Ron, the first Healer points his wand at his wristwatch and speaks into it. "Smith, Autry, and Farrell, report to room 307 immediately. I repeat, Smith, Autry, and Farrell to room 307 _immediately_."

The second Healer says, "Out, everyone but medistaff."

Hermione snarls, Tonks starts to argue, and Ron makes a weak protest. Harry can't shake the feeling that this is all some bizarre dream he'll wake up from in a few minutes. He stares blankly at the Healer, even as more hospital personnel pour in behind her. " _Now_ ," she says. "Even you, Mr. Potter." A mediwizard is propelling Tonks toward the exit, as she struggles all the way.

Hermione whips out her wand. "Don't any of you touch me."

The tableau freezes. "Who is she?" the Healer holding Harry asks.

Harry looks at Hermione's protective stance, the way Ron's gaze follows her like he's afraid to let her move out of his sight. "Ron's…fiancée," he says, knowing it will be true, soon enough. "You'll never get her out of here unless you Stun and drag her." The Healer's eyes narrow for a moment, and Harry says, flatly, "Don't even consider it, or _I'll_ hex _you_."

She exchanges glances with the other Healers. "Fine, she can stay. But you two go." And the room is set in motion again.

"Harry," Ron rasps, and Harry meets his eyes, his gut twisting at the thought of being separated from him again so soon. He looks around the room, at the medical personnel whom he knows are only there to ensure Ron's health, to make sure he's all right. "I—" he chokes. "I won't be far. I'll be here when you need me, Ron."

Tonks is pushed outside with him, and the door slams in his face.

* * *

The witch staffing the front desk tells Ginny that yes, she did see Tonks enter—the odd plum-colored hair was a dead giveaway—but she went to the lift, rather than down the hall to Obscure Maladies.

"Didn't you ask where she was going?" Ginny demands.

"She's an Auror," the witch says, spreading her hands. "Full security clearance. And her magical signature checked out when she walked through the barrier, so there was no reason to stop her."

Ginny tries to beat back her frustration. "Fine," she says. "All right. I'll have to page—" But just at that moment, another voice, spell-transmitted, echoes through the corridor.

"Smith, Autry, and Farrell, report to room 307 immediately. I repeat, Smith, Autry, and Farrell, report to room 307 _immediately_."

Later, she will have no memory of hurtling up the stairs to the Incurable Hexes ward, too impatient for the lift, the only thought in her head the knowledge that 307 is her brother's room, and pages like that don't go out except in emergency situations.

She sprints through the ward, uncaring of the shouts of other Healers and medistaff, slowing only at the sight of Harry and Tonks outside the door of room 307. Tonks looks helpless and frustrated, while Harry's forehead is pressed to the wall.

"It can't—" Harry is saying. "He can't—" He slams a fist against the wall, and Ginny can see he's shaking.

"What happened?" she demands, her heart in her throat, trying to prepare herself for the worst, but, oh, God, there's no way to prepare, no way at all—

Tonks whirls to face her. "Ginny!" Ginny is grateful for the arms that encircle her, pull her close, especially when she begins to comprehend what Tonks is saying. "Ron woke up! He's awake! He's going to be OK, I know it!"

"The page," she manages through the shock of joy and fear and relief, "that's what—?"

"Yes!" Tonks says, squeezing her. "He woke up, he moved, he spoke!"

"Oh, God!" She buries her face in Tonks's shoulder, and when she finally lifts her head, she finds that Harry has turned around, slumping now against the wall and watching them with the bright, empty gaze of someone in a state of shock. "Harry," she says, "aren't you—"

"I don't understand." His voice is flat, just the slightest hint of a tremor underneath. "I don't understand why it worked."

"Don't you see, Harry?" Tonks says, arms still snug around Ginny. "That _has_ to be the spell!"

"It _isn't_!" Harry shouts, and Ginny and Tonks both jump. "It was a fluke, it was something else—"

"Harry," Tonks says, more sternly, "I've read all the transcripts."

"What does that have to do with anything?" There is almost a plea in his voice. Ginny's eyes dart back and forth between them, unsure what's going on.

"I think—" Tonks hesitates. "—I think maybe it's true."

"Malfoy does _NOT LOVE ME_!" he shouts, and Ginny's mouth falls open.

"What—?" she asks. "Why—?"

"The spell Draco used," Tonks says, gaze still fixed on Harry. "If it was the one we think it was, the only way it would have worked was if Draco was secretly in love with Harry, but had Harry convinced otherwise."

"It's impossible," Harry says flatly. "Even when I gave him the opportunity—" He stops dead and shuts his mouth.

"What opportunity?" she asks, her heart starting to beat faster.

He glares.

"Damn it, Harry, what are you talking about?!"

"I all but begged him to join our side!" Harry explodes in a rush of words.

Ginny can feel Tonks's shock even through her own—though, really, it isn't any shock, is it? She'd known that was coming, knew Harry had fancied himself in some sort of friendship with Malfoy. "Harry," Tonks says, "what are you—?"

Harry isn't even looking at them anymore, his gaze unfocused, staring into some moment in the past, his hands fisted against his thighs. "All this fucking nonsense about how he didn't have a choice, and how everything ends, and really it was because he didn't care enough about me to take the risk. He didn't—fucking— _care_."

Ginny feels her shock slowly turning to horror. "Harry," she manages, "you can't mean that you—you _wanted_ him to—"

Harry laughs, a sharp, frightening sound, and tugs off his glasses, rubbing the heel of his other palm against his eye. "I wanted anything the bastard would give me, and I was ridiculously obvious about it. He couldn't have _not_ known how I felt."

 _As if Harry would ever give a damn about you_ , she'd sneered, and by the time she was finished, something had died a little in Malfoy's eyes.

She begins to feel ill.

"Harry," Tonks gasps, "were you _sleeping_ with him?"

Harry slips his glasses back on and laughs again, this time sounding uglier even than before. "Only in my imagination, I'm afraid."

"But—" Ginny protests, "wasn't it just lust, then? I mean, you were, what, 17? You couldn't have really loved him—"

"I never got the chance to find out!" he snaps, and glares at her. "Besides, how do you know what I felt at 17 wasn't real? Didn't you think you loved me when we were dating?"

"Harry, you know I love you," she protests.

"But was it any less real just because you were a teenager?" Harry's eyes are hot, pleading.

"I—" She remembers the way she felt when she was around him back in those days, as though her heart was so full of love she might burst if she couldn't be near him, couldn't share her affection, couldn't feel his love, his touch, in return. "No," she says. "No, it was real. Of course it was real."

Harry closes his eyes again. "There was never anything…understood, so to speak. But—he gave me reason to hope. I knew it was deliberate—or, I was sure it was, at the time."

"Harry, just because he followed you to the lake—"

Harry's head snaps up. "How do you know about that?"

"I—" _Fuck_. "I saw the two of you one morning. I knew you met with him out there."

His intent gaze unnerves her. "You never said anything."

"No, I—" She closes her eyes and cringes at what she's about to admit. But there's no help for it now. "Not to you."

"Who, then?"

She opens her eyes, refusing to flinch at his reaction. "Malfoy."

Tonks takes a startled step backward, and Ginny feels the loss of her embrace keenly. "Ginny," Harry says in a terrible voice, "what did you do?"

"I was trying to _help_ you!" she says, sudden fright making her voice shrill. "You couldn't know what he was planning!"

"Neither could you!" Harry shouts. "Christ, Ginny, when the hell did this happen? What did you say to him?"

"The day before you left school," she whispers, and Harry pales. "I just—I warned him away. I told him not to hurt you. I told him to leave you alone."

"And it never occurred to you," Harry says, his voice low and raw, "that his leaving me alone might be one of the worst ways to hurt me?"

"Harry, I didn't know!" she cries, and reaches to grasp his arm, but he sidesteps her, and her hand touches only empty air. "Harry, I'm sorry, how could I know you'd—that he was—"

"You could have talked to me," he says. "I thought we were friends, Gin."

"We are! But that's not the point! Do you mean to tell me that if you thought I was mixed up in something that could hurt me, you wouldn't try to protect me?"

Harry closes his eyes, and she notices how thin he looks, how tired, how hollow. "Certain experiences," he says, grimacing, "taught me some years ago the lack of wisdom in acting without first determining the facts."

Ginny remembers suddenly the guilt and agony that tortured Harry in the months—years, even—following Sirius's death, and she shivers. "Harry, it wasn't like that—'

" _You didn't think_ ," he snaps. "That's the kind of thing that gets people killed."

"Nobody got killed!"

"Your brother could have been." Ginny freezes. "I could have been. Any of the Aurors who were there that night could have been."

She sucks in a breath, tries to remain calm. "You don't know that he would have listened to you if I hadn't talked to him."

"No," Harry says. "I don't. But your intervention pretty much shut the door on that possibility, didn't it?"

"Harry—"

"What did he say?"

She blinks at the abrupt question. "What?"

"What did he say when you talked to him?"

"He—oh, hell, Harry, I can't remember exactly."

Harry scowls, his eyes cold. "Try."

She wracks her brain, Harry's gaze heavy on her, and even Tonks watching her with an air of confusion. "I—don't remember if he said anything much, really. He was angry, hostile. You know what he was like, Harry," she says, desperately.

Harry's expression doesn't change. "Keep talking."

"He just—he didn't really answer anything. Just made some flippant remarks about 'tender feelings.'"

She cries out when Harry's hand clamps painfully on her upper arm. "He what?"

"He was just being a prat, Harry. This is _Malfoy_ we're—"

"His or mine?"

"What?"

"His 'tender feelings' or mine?"

"I—" Harry's eyes frighten her. "Both, I think."

"Goddamn it, Ginny!"

"He was just trying to get a rise out of me, Harry, you _know_ that!"

"I don't know anything, apparently, and neither do you," he bites out, releasing her arm as if disgusted to touch her. He turns away, drags his hands through his already messy hair. "So it could be true," he says slowly, and looks at Tonks. "It could be true."

"Harry—" Tonks says, looking alarmed.

"The fucker might have _loved_ me and never said anything, just shoved me out of his life and then fucking put himself in _danger_ to protect me. God _damn_ him!"

His rising anger is a tangible thing. Ginny can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as his magic crackles around them. "Harry," she says, "don't—"

But he's already sprinting down the hall, the pounding of his footfalls echoing behind him.

* * *

There are precious few things Harry Potter can count on as constants in his life.

One is that Voldemort, though weakened now after years of war and several near-misses, is still out to kill him, but he hopes to take care of that obstacle at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Another is the love of his friends, even when they are far away, or angry, or frustrated with him.

Another still has been Draco Malfoy's loathing.

Over the years, he's lost track of all the ways in which they hated each other—fierce competition on the Quidditch pitch, sabotage in Potions, dragons and badges and curses—and sunsets. For a brief time, Harry had forgotten what "constant" meant—that it was _always_ , that it was _unchanging_. What it wasn't, was quiet touches, and murmured promises, and shared dawns. "Constant vigilance!" Moody had taught them, in both his fake and real incarnations, but Harry hadn't been vigilant. Harry had let his guard down, and to the worst possible person he could have, the one guaranteed to break his faith, and his heart.

He'd spent nearly a decade beating himself up for that folly, hating that he couldn't make himself forget those moments of deceptive peace, the feel of Malfoy's hand against his, the look in Malfoy's eyes that last night before they left Hogwarts, when Harry stepped away from him—anger, betrayal, hurt—everything Harry knew was reflected in his own gaze. He'd all but convinced himself he'd imagined it, that he'd seen only what he'd wanted to see. 

There'd been no reason for him to have begun to fixate on Malfoy back at Hogwarts. He wasn't kind. He wasn't unusually brilliant. He wasn't even particularly attractive—pale and pointy and little taller than Harry himself. And then, of course, there was the whole bitter-rivals element. Malfoy was the last person on Earth Harry should have felt any attraction to, outside of Voldemort himself. But there'd been something vulnerable and haunted under the abrasive surface that somehow only seemed to come to light in the slow ascent of the morning sun. Maybe it spoke to Harry's reflex to save people. Maybe he was intrigued by Malfoy's insecurities. Maybe he was lulled by hard-won trust.

And didn't that just make it all the more painful, when it seemed that trust had never really existed?

Harry's lungs burn and his heart pounds as he sprints down the corridor and vaults down the stairs, anger a staticky roar in his head. _They'd better not have changed the security spells_ , he thinks as he barrels toward Obscure Maladies, _they'd better not have_. But when he reaches for the doorknob to Malfoy's room, there is merely a tingle as the magic senses him, and he is through.

He only dimly registers that there are other people in the room—his gaze is on Malfoy, whose eyes light up with what is unmistakably hope when Harry crashes into the room, then he begins to scramble backward as he takes note of the expression on Harry's face.

"Potter," he says, twisting to get free of the mediwizard restraining his arms. "What are you—" Harry grabs him by the shirtfront and yanks him forward, out of the mediwizard's grip, so that he stumbles off the bed, falling to his knees on the hard floor. "Potter—"

Harry is on the floor with him, pressing him back and straddling his midsection, a hand against Malfoy's pale throat. "What did you do?" he growls.

"I don't know what you mean!" Malfoy chokes, struggling now against Harry's grip, his breath beginning to wheeze.

"I want to know what you did!" Harry shouts, removing his hand from the other man's throat, and instead digging both hands into his shoulders.

"Potter, you've gone mad," Malfoy gasps, eyes darting from side to side, as though seeking help.

Harry slams Malfoy's head against the ground, ignoring his choked cry. "What were you trying to do that night?" he yells, slamming again, again, and remembering that he'd done this then, too—driven Malfoy's skull into the ground, horrified to have found him among Death Eaters, terrified for Ron, shaking with anger that he'd had the idiocy to _hope_ — "What the fuck did you think you were trying to do?!"

"Protecting you, you imbecile!" Malfoy shouts, and they both freeze.

Harry releases Malfoy's shoulders. "What?" he whispers.

Malfoy is panting, his eyes shadowed with pain before he closes them. "Protecting you," he says again, his tone filled with wonder. " _I remember_."

Harry fists his hands in Draco's shirtfront and lifts his torso so that they face each other, almost nose to nose. Startled, Malfoy's eyes fly open, and Harry can see in them the dilated pupils and slightly glazed appearance of someone under the effects of a controlling spell—like Veritaserum. Harry's hands are shaking—from adrenaline, he tells himself. "What happened that night?" he demands.

Malfoy's breath has slowed, and his voice is almost calm when he answers. "Aunt Bella knew you were coming. She or one of the other Death Eaters had been interrupting intelligence communications for a while, and she knew the Aurors were suspicious."

Harry furrows his brow. "Why was Bellatrix there in the first place?"

"She and the others escaped Azkaban just before Father was Kissed," he says, only the lines forming around his mouth giving tell to the pain the memory must cause.

"Did you help them escape?" Harry demands.

"No," Malfoy says. "I—knew something was coming, but I wasn't one of the planners. Nobody told me what was happening until afterward. With all of the uproar, the Aurors never noticed she'd reached the Manor. After Mother—" he closes his eyes briefly "—hanged herself, Aunt Bella used Polyjuice to take her place. Everyone thought there was a symbolic empty coffin at Father's memorial service. Actually," he swallows, "we buried my mother."

"You weren't at the memorial service," Harry says, remembering the article in the _Prophet_. "Why not?"

"We knew the Aurors wanted me—for questioning, they'd say, but it never would have been that simple." Harry shifted his eyes away, knowing the truth of Malfoy's statement. "My father had kept a library deep in the lowest level of the house where he stored old books and manuscripts. Bella thought it best that I stay down there, with shielding charms to prevent anyone from finding me." His voice turns bitter. "She locked me in there."

"Locked you—"

"Spelled it so only she could enter the room—or leave it. She said a book-smart brat like I was would better serve the cause by doing research than letting myself be captured by Aurors and giving all of our secrets away."

"Research what?"

"A spell to help kill you."

"A weapon," Harry murmurs, remembering something Tonks said recently.

"That's what Bella called it. The ultimate weapon against Harry Potter. Something the Aurors would never see coming."

"Did you find it?" Harry asks, bitterly.

"I found a lot of things that could have been the weapon she wanted. I didn't tell her about any of them."

Harry blinks. "Why not?"

"I didn't want to kill you," Malfoy says. "I didn't want to be a Death Eater anymore."

"Why?" Harry whispers.

"Because they left my father behind in Azkaban," he bites. "And the Dark—Voldemort wouldn't lift a finger, even after we heard Father would be Kissed."

Harry feels as though his world has inverted itself, and there's nothing for him to grab to keep from falling. "You were angry that Voldemort wouldn't help your father?"

"Yes. I was bound to Voldemort, but my first loyalty was to my father."

"Yes," Harry says, distantly. "It always was, wasn't it?" At Malfoy's quiet, "Yes," he lowers Malfoy back to the floor and slowly relaxes the hands fisted in Malfoy's shirt. "Why did the spell work?" Harry rasps, almost but not quite letting go.

Malfoy doesn't pretend not to understand what he means, even given the excuse of a vague question asked under Veritaserum. "I knew you must have thought I hated you, after…that night by the lake." His eyes close. "But I didn't."

"What did—" Harry begins to ask, but is interrupted by the lash of a new voice.

"That will be sufficient, Potter."

He turns slowly to see Moody watching from the corner, his expression calm and somehow unsurprised, and it is only now that Harry notices Moody's raised hand, a "stay" gesture directed at the two confused, hovering mediwizards. "Sir?" Harry asks, hating how lost and bewildered he sounds.

"Gentlemen." Moody waves a hand, and the mediwizards approach the two men on the floor, one pulling Harry away, the other sliding his hands under Malfoy's shoulders to lift him off the ground. "Please escort Potter out," Moody says, and Harry begins to struggle.

"No," he says, "wait—" But the door is open, and even as Tonks stumbles through with an expression of shocked confusion, the mediwizard is pulling him back.

"Tonks," he hears Moody bark. "Finally. Let's get a move on—we're already late with the transport."

Harry's last sight before the door closes in his face is Malfoy struggling against his captor. His shout of "Harry!" is cut off abruptly with the slamming of the door.


	13. Tomorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 13 originally posted May 9, 2005.
> 
> Grateful thanks to my betas, Maerda Erised, Bow, and Marks.

_And time weaves ribbons of memory  
To sweeten life when youth is through,  
But I would need no memories there  
If I could share my life with you._  
—Stephen Schwartz, "With You" (from _Pippin_ )

 

It figures that Draco Malfoy would have taken a flat in Harry's neighborhood, even if Malfoy doesn't realize it.

After two months off the job, Harry's Auror robes feel almost unfamiliar to him now, yet still strangely comforting, almost like sliding onto a broom again after being sidelined by injury. There isn't that same sense of exultation, but still, it's good. He hadn't realized quite how much he'd miss the challenge, and even the daily grind. It's hard to believe it's been that long—almost two months since Ron woke up, six weeks since Draco Malfoy was released from hospital, two weeks since the Malfoy case was finally closed, with all charges dropped. 

The Ministry wasn't quite ready to let such a high-profile admitted Death Eater get off scot-free, until Hermione and Remus stepped in to offer cool, reasoned defenses and proof of Malfoy's actions against the Death Eaters and in protection of Harry. In the end, they reasoned that four months in hospital was a sort of punishment anyway, and gave in grudgingly.

During Harry's suspension, he and Tonks had met weekly, ostensibly for drinks, though mostly so Harry could pry for information about Malfoy, and Tonks could pry for information about Ginny—not that Harry knows any more about Ginny's self-imposed exile than Tonks does, in spite of Harry and Ginny's cautious reconciliation. Tonks has always been kind, though, and never dropped the façade that Harry sought information only because of his work on the Malfoy case. She's told him things the _Prophet_ doesn't know, or doesn't report. Like how the _Prophet_ seemed intent on stalking Malfoy from almost the instant of his release, and how death threats continue to rain down on Malfoy Manor, even though Malfoy doesn't live there any longer and, Tonks claims, has no intention of doing so ever again.

It's little wonder, really, that Malfoy is hiding out among Muggles these days.

A lot of questions had been answered during the hearings that led up to the Ministry's charges against Malfoy being dropped. The _Daily Prophet_ 's reporters hadn't been permitted entrance, so much of the coverage was speculation and sensationalism. But Tonks gave Harry the truth—how Malfoy never denied his willingness to join the Death Eaters, in spite of his increasing reservations during his final year at Hogwarts (Tonks eyed Harry suspiciously as she told him this). How Malfoy had keyed his communication spell to Hermione's magical signature because rumor placed her in Intelligence, and he knew that she, at least, would never be a Death Eater sympathizer. How Lucius's Kiss had been the final straw after years of growing aversion to Death Eater methods and missions. How he'd never intended to cause harm to Harry Potter, and had in fact protected him at very nearly the cost of his own life. The Ministry officials had been awed at Malfoy's scar, Tonks said, after Remus had described the spell and produced photographs and diagrams as evidence. Harry himself had been called to testify, but otherwise was excluded from the hearings due to his suspended status. He'd dispassionately answered questions about the night of the raid, and about his suspicions regarding Malfoy's loyalties back in school, but he was never pressed too far, never asked specifically about the nature of his relationship with Malfoy, and Harry didn't volunteer the information. Malfoy was present during his questioning, and their eyes met only briefly before Malfoy averted his gaze, his face blank. Harry hasn't seen him since.

Even though Malfoy's case is closed, it's remarkably easy for an Auror with the right connections to learn the very much not public home address of a wizard formerly under investigation. Or at least it would under ordinary circumstances. Malfoy, however, proved a tougher case than most.

Harry had ranted in Hermione's office, pacing back and forth as she watched calmly, hands folded against the desktop, Ron's ring sparkling on her left hand. "Nobody knows where he is!" he'd railed. "It's like he disappeared off the face of the earth!"

"Why do you want to find him?"

Harry had halted, startled at the question. "I—just to talk—to see if he's—" He stopped and shut his mouth as she narrowed her eyes at him.

"You don't mean to attack him again?"

"Of course not!"

Eyes still narrow. "You promise?"

"Yes, yes, I promise." He searched her eyes, and something he saw in there made him approach the desk. "Hermione, do you know where he is?"

She gazed back at him without changing expression.

"Hermione," he said. "Please. If you know where he is, tell me."

"You're asking me where to find Draco Malfoy?" she'd asked, slowly and clearly.

"Yes, I—" He shook his head and stepped back. "God, you don't know either, do you? Damn it—"

"He's under Fidelius," she said, watching him evenly.

He froze, and could practically feel the hope draining right out of his chest. "I'll never find him, then," he said, and his voice sounded as hollow as he felt. "Fuck. He's— _fuck!_ " He spun, raised a fist to hit the wall, hit _something_.

"I'm his Secret-Keeper," Hermione continued, and nearly cracked a smile when Harry's mouth fell open.

The fact that she admitted this still puzzles him. He'd never taken her for the type to betray a confidence, especially one as sacred as a Fidelius Charm. But he hadn't wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth—and still is relieved not to have had to resort to any underhanded tactics or influence-peddling, or even interference in the form of an Intelligence officer's just-back-from-the-brink-of-death fiancé, to get the information.

And so, here he is.

He can feel the security spells on the flat even from outside the door—the faint buzz on the edge of his senses, so subtle, most Muggles would never even realize it's there—and he hesitates for a moment, his knuckles inches from the wood. The last time he approached Malfoy's home, he'd landed in hospital for his troubles, and one of his closest friends had nearly died. The last time he'd spoken with Malfoy, he'd physically attacked the man and had to be dragged away. He'll be lucky if Malfoy doesn't hex him where he stands.

Steeling his courage, he raps three times on the door.

When Malfoy opens it, it's with an almost bored air, and with none of the surprise or anger Harry had expected. He leans against the jamb, arms crossed. "Potter."

"Malfoy," Harry says. Everything seems to fly out of his head at the sight of him, still thinner than he should be, cool and pale, eyes speculative.

"I expect Granger told you where to find me."

"I—yes, but—she—I made her—"

Malfoy waves a hand in dismissal. "I told her it was all right to tell you. But only if you asked." Malfoy's eyes catch his, and there's a nervous, unsettled light in them that makes Harry straighten. Malfoy shrugs a little, glances away. "I didn't think you really would ask."

Something inside of Harry twists, hard. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No!" Malfoy blinks, lowers the hand that had begun to reach, seemingly without thought, toward Harry. "I mean—not if you don't want to. I…wasn't sure you'd ever want to see me again."

"Of course I wanted to see you," Harry insists. "I—" He glances away, then back at Malfoy. "You're…well now?"

"As well as a marked-for-death ex-Death Eater can be, I suppose."

Harry scowls. "That's not what I—"

Malfoy sighs. "Yes, to get the pleasantries out of the way, I'm fine. Memory one-hundred percent recovered. Psychosomatic memory loss," he enunciates, as though reciting. "Response to traumatic stimuli." He sneers. "You Gryffindors always did think I was a head case. Must be nice to have it confirmed."

Harry refuses to rise to the bait. "And…the other?" He gestures vaguely at his own chest.

"As healed as it ever will be." Malfoy smirks. "I suppose now we can be manly and boast about our scars together."

"So, the scar," Harry continues doggedly, "that means you were hit by—"

"Probably Bella's Killing Curse, yes. That's what the evidence points to."

Harry breathes. "Malfoy, you probably saved my life."

Malfoy is silent for a few moments, fidgeting, then he sighs again. "Look, Potter, don't let this go to your head—"

Harry feels something within him die a little, and promise to Hermione or no, Harry wants to deck him. "Wouldn't dream of it," he snaps.

Malfoy doesn't invite him in, but neither does he send Harry away. Harry stands outside the door, eyes downcast, feeling hurt, foolish, his mind racing. He thinks he can sense Malfoy's searching gaze on him, and something doesn't feel quite right. "Er," Harry says at last, "but you _were_ —willing to sacrifice yourself to save me?"

Malfoy's voice is dry. "We're all entitled to lapses in judgment."

"Oh," Harry says, and he can't bear to meet Malfoy's eyes. _I shouldn't have come. God, the presumption—I'm such an idiot—_

"Have you always been this much of an idiot, Potter?" Harry's head snaps up when Malfoy echoes his thoughts, and he almost winces at Malfoy's disgusted expression. But when he looks more closely, he can see a light in Malfoy's eyes that's almost—warm.

"I—" Harry clears his throat and takes a chance. "I'd almost be convinced of it, if I'd listened to your thoughts on the subject all those years."

Malfoy's expression doesn't change, but he seems to Harry to be a heartbeat away from a smile. "Too right."

Harry's heart is in his throat when he speaks again. "So you really did—I mean, not just because of the Boy Who Lived thing, but—for me—?"

Malfoy looks away. "Yes," he says, then lifts his gaze to meet Harry's again, and Harry's never felt leaping, soaring hope quite like this.

When an envelope appears out of thin air in front of him, he catches it instinctively and curses to see his name on it, along with the seal of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "I—sorry," he mutters, sliding his thumb under the flap, hating that this has interrupted, but knowing the Ministry doesn't use the translocation spell for trivial things, especially with attacks escalating as Voldemort begins to sense defeat is nigh. Everyone in wizarding Britain is edgy, with reason. "Fuck," Harry says as he reads, and lifts his head to meet Malfoy's eyes again. "I have to go."

Malfoy's expression shutters, and mentally Harry curses again. "Right," Malfoy says, clearly withdrawing both physically and emotionally. "Of course."

Before he has time to think, to consider, to reflect on all the ways this could backfire—all the ways such overtures _have_ backfired in the past—Harry seizes Malfoy's hand between his. "Look, Malfoy—I'll see you tomorrow, all right?"

Malfoy's hand jerks at Harry's words, and his gaze searches Harry's intently, clearly distrusting. But then, slowly, something dawns in his eyes, and Malfoy's fingers curl around his. 

"All right," he says, his lips curving into a smile. "Tomorrow."


End file.
